Motivation: The evolutionary distance inferred from gene-order comparisons of related bacteria is dependent on the model. Therefore, it is highly important to establish reliable assumptions before inferring its magnitude.
Results: We investigate the patterns of dotplots between species of bacteria with the purpose of model selection in gene-order problems. We find several categories of data which can be explained by carefully weighing the contributions of reversals, transpositions, symmetrical reversals, single gene transpositions and single gene reversals. We also derive method of moments distance estimates for some previously uncomputed cases, such as symmetrical reversals, single gene reversals and their combinations, as well as the single gene transpositions edit distance.