Cluster partitions and fitness landscapes of the Drosophila fly microbiome

Beerenwinkel et al.(2007) suggested studying fitness landscapes via regular subdivisions of convex polytopes. Building on their approach we propose cluster partitions and cluster filtrations of fitness landscapes as a new mathematical tool. In this way, we provide a concise combinatorial way of processing metric information from epistatic interactions. Using existing Drosophila microbiome data, we demonstrate similarities with and differences to the previous approach. As one outcome we locate interesting epistatic information where the previous approach is less conclusive.