SplitsTree: analyzing and visualizing evolutionary data

MOTIVATION: Real evolutionary data often contain a number of different andsometimes conflicting phylogenetic signals, and thus do not always clearlysupport a unique tree. To address this problem, Bandelt and Dress (Adv.Math., 92, 47-05, 1992) developed the method of split decomposition. Forideal data, this method gives rise to a tree, whereas less ideal data arerepresented by a tree-like network that may indicate evidence for differentand conflicting phylogenies. RESULTS: SplitsTree is an interactive program,for analyzing and visualizing evolutionary data, that implements thisapproach. It also supports a number of distances transformations, thecomputation of parsimony splits, spectral analysis and bootstrapping.