A multivariate complexity analysis of the Generalized Noah’s Ark Problem

Journal Article (2026)
Author(s)

Christian Komusiewicz (Friedrich Schiller University Jena)

Jannik Schestag (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Research Group
Discrete Mathematics and Optimization
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dam.2025.11.037 Final published version
More Info
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Publication Year
2026
Language
English
Research Group
Discrete Mathematics and Optimization
Journal title
Discrete Applied Mathematics
Volume number
382
Pages (from-to)
137-154
Downloads counter
34
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Abstract

In the Generalized Noah’s Ark Problem , one is given a phylogenetic tree on a set of species X and a set of conservation projects for each species. Each project comes with a cost and raises the survival probability of the corresponding species. The aim is to select a conservation project for each species such that the total cost of the selected projects does not exceed some given threshold and the expected phylogenetic diversity is as large as possible. We study the complexity of Generalized Noah’s Ark Problem and some of its special cases with respect to several parameters related to the input structure, such as the number of different costs, the number of different survival probabilities, or the number of species, |X|.