Interactive visualization software for exploring phylogenetic trees and clades

Abstract

The Summary Tree Explorer (STE) is a Java application for interactively exploring sets of phylogenetic trees using two coupled representations: a node-and-link diagram and a textual list of common clades. Selection, pruning, filtering or re-rooting in one representation is immediately reflected in the other. While summary trees are more effective at showing the relationship among clades, they can only show a consistent subset of those that appear in the textual list. Working with both representations mitigates the disadvantages of having to choose just one.

Availability: STE, along with several sample datasets, is available at http://cityscape.inf.cs.cmu.edu/phylogeny/