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Updated: Jan 8, 2026

A Practical Guide to Phylogenetics for Nonexperts
Published on: February 5, 2014
Sketch, capture and layout phylogenies
1Institute for Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
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Phylogenetic trees and networks play a central role in biology, bioinformatics, and mathematical biology, and producing clear, informative visualizations of them is an important task. We present new algorithms for visualizing rooted phylogenetic networks in either a "combining" or "transfer" view, in both cladogram and phylogram style. In addition, we introduce a layout algorithm that aims to improve clarity by minimizing the total reticulate displacement of reticulate edges. To address the common issue that biological publications often omit machine-readable representations of depicted trees and networks, we also provide an image-based algorithm that assists in extracting their topology from figures. All algorithms are implemented in our new open source PhyloSketch app.
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