Dendroscope
Software for visualizing phylogenetic trees and rooted networks.
- Download a beta version of Dendroscope 3 here.
Dendroscope 3
We have spent many months working on Dendroscope 3, with the aim of providing a tool that makes it easy to work with multiple trees simultaneously. Moreover, we hope to develop Dendroscope into a plattform for computing and working with rooted phylogenetic networks. We are currently writing a paper that describes the new program and we will officially release the program once the paper is published.
The program is already is very good shape and you can download a beta version here.
Dendroscope 2 - An interactive viewer for large phylogenetic trees and networks
Researchers studying phylogenetic relationships need software that is able to visualize rooted phylogenetic trees and networks efficiently, increasingly of large datasets involving hundreds of thousands of taxa. The program should be user friendly (easy to run on all popular operating systems), facilitate interactive browsing and editing the trees and allow one to export the result in multiple file formats in publication quality.
We have developed the platform independent tree and rooted network viewer Dendroscope that addresses these issues.
Feature List:
- Large trees with hundreds of thousands of taxa can be easily displayed, browsed and edited;
- Novel magnifying features for zooming detailed views (see screenshots);
- Find and replace dialog that uses regular expressions;
- Subtrees can be collapsed and colored;
- All labels (leaves/inner nodes and edges) can be edited;
- Trees can be rerooted;
- Seven different views are available, including a rectangular, slanted, circular and radial view;
- Input formats: Newick and Nexus, extended-Newick (for rooted phylogenetic networks) and Dendroscope;
- Multiple graphic export formats: .eps, .svg, .png, .jpg, .gif, .bmp, .pdf;
- Trees and networks can be copied and pasted between different windows
- Platform independent (Java, installers for common operating systems available)
- Consensus trees and rooted phylogenetic networks can be computed from a set of trees
- Commandline mode
Download
Use of the program requires a license. Academic licenses are freely available to all academic users. Usage in non-academic settings requires a free commerical license. All uses of the program must be acknowledged by citing our paper on Dendroscope. Obtain a license key online.
Download an installer for linux, MacOS X or Windows for version 3 here.
(Version two is still available here).
You can test the performance of the program on the NCBI taxonomy.
References
- Daniel H Huson, Daniel C Richter, Christian Rausch, Tobias Dezulian, Markus Franz and Regula Rupp. Dendroscope: An interactive viewer for large phylogenetic trees, BMC Bioinformatics. 2007 Nov 22;8(1):460 (Here you can find Table 1 from the paper in case it is wrongly displayed in the pdf or at the BMC webpage.)
The new network capabilities introduced in version 2.0 are based on the following papers:
- D.H. Huson and R. Rupp, Summarizing Multiple Gene Trees using Cluster Networks, WABI 2008, 295-305.
- D.H. Huson, Drawing Rooted Phylogenetic Networks, TCBB, Jan-March 2009, Vol.6, Issue 1, pages 103-109.
- D. H. Huson, R. Rupp, V. Berry, P. Gambette and C. Paul - Computing galled networks from real data, Bioinformatics 2009 25(12):i85-i93; doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btp217.
If you have any comments or questions then please write us an email. You can also reach this site via: http://www.dendroscope.org
Screenshots
Same tree - seven different views: Rectangular Phylogram, Rectangular Cladogram, Slanted Cladogram, Circular Phylogram, Circular Cladogram, Radial Phylogram and Radial Cladogram:

Part of the NCBI taxonomy showing Homo sapiens and his relatives without the magnifier:

Same detail of previous tree with the magnifier turned on:

Part of a slanted cladogram with magnifier turned off:

Same part of previous cladogram with magnifier turned on:

All labels and tree substructures can be easily edited:





