  In a population with haploid reproduction any individual has a single parent
in the previous generation. If all genealogical distances among pairs of
individuals (generations from the closest common ancestor) are known it is
possible to exactly reconstruct their genealogical tree. Unfortunately, in most
cases, genealogical distances are unknown and only genetic distances are
available. The genetic distance between two individuals is measurable from
differences in mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) in the case of humans or other complex
organisms while an analogous distance can be also given for languages where it
is measured from lexical differences. Assuming a constant rate of mutation,
these genetic distances are random and proportional only on average to
genealogical ones. The reconstruction of the genealogical tree from the
available genetic distances is forceful imprecise. In this paper we try to
quantify the error one may commit in the reconstruction of the tree for
different degrees of randomness. The errors may concern both topology of the
tree (the branching hierarchy) and, in case of correct topology, the
proportions of the tree (length of various branches).
