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RogueNaRok: identifying rogue taxa in a set of phylogenetic trees
Rogue taxa are a class of taxa with uncertain position in a
phylogenetic tree. For inference methods that yield a tree set
(bootstrapping, Bayesian tree searches), rogue taxa can assume
different positions for each tree. Theoretically, the presence of
few rogue taxa in a tree set is sufficient to render the consensus
tree of this tree set devoid of any phylogenetic
information. Practically, in almost any tree set we can at least
slightly improve the sum of branch support values in a consensus
tree (by removing rogue taxa).
Citation:
- A.J. Aberer, D. Krompass, A. Stamatakis: "Pruning Rogue Taxa Improves Phylogenetic Accuracy: An Efficient Algorithm and Webservice", Systematic Biology, in press.
Suggested workflow:
- Upload a tree set (1 Newick tree per line). Also upload a maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) tree, if you want RogueNaRok to optimize the bipartition support drawn on your MLE tree.
- Start rogue taxon identification (in many cases default parameters do not need to be modified). Once finished, a listing of taxa is annotated with values indicating how detrimental the specific taxon is to the consensus tree. The annotation can be extended with the result of various runs. This way, you can for instance compare, what taxa are determined to be rogues depending on parameter and algorithm choice (or which rogues also decrease the bipartition support drawn on a MLE tree).
- Once you have decided on a set of rogue taxa to exclude, you can remove these taxa from your tree set and obtain the consensus tree of your choice (resp. MLE tree with bipartition support). Alternatively, you may want to go through further iterations of step (2), in case taxa were determined to be rogue that are crucial for your analysis or in case you want to continue exploring the parameter space.
Explaination of result visualization:
- As explained on the first page ("submit a job"), the web browser has to be forced to display the output applet (allowance of pop-ups and javascript). For the applet a compatible java plugin must be installed.
- Each time, you press "prune/visualize", the server creates an output file for visualization. These files then appear as tabs in the order of creation in the Archaeopteryx tree viewer. Your current selection will appear in red in previous visualizations (but obviously not in the current tab, since you excluded these taxa).
- Intended use: Before exploring the effect of pruning taxa, visualize the unpruned consensus tree (i.e., do not select any taxa). This opens an "_init"-tab in the tree viewer. Now make a selection and prune taxa. In the _init-tab, the pruned taxa will appear in red, thus indicating the previous position of the taxa you pruned.
- Abbreviations: tabs are named according to mode (various consensus trees, ML-tree) under which they were created. A counter n at the end of the id indicates that this tab is the n-th consensus tree you viusalized.
Available algorithms and their output:
- RogueNaRok-algorithm: a fast algorithm that iteratively determines how exactly the support of consensus bipartitions changes, if a set of n taxa is removed from the tree set. An annotation of 1.5 means, that the equivalent of 1.5 fully supported bipartitions (e.g., 3 bipartitions with support 50%) is added to the consensus tree, if this taxon and all taxa determined in previous iterations (note the sorting of the listing) are removed from the tree set.
- Leaf stability index: a statistic for measuring the node stability in a tree set based on quartet frequencies by Thorley and Wilkinson (1999). Values range between 0 (unstable) and 1 (stable).
- Taxonomic instability index: a statistic for measuring the node stability in a tree set based on unweighted patristic distances by Maddison and Maddison (also implemented in Mesquite). The higher the annotation value, the more unstable is the taxon.
Standalone and further Documentation:
- For large datasets (e.g. 1000 trees with 1000 taxa) or expensive choices of parameters, it is advisable to download a copy of the RogueNaRok implementation and execute the programs on a local machine or a cluster. For the most current version, visit https://github.com/aberer/RogueNaRok.
- The wiki on our github site provides detailed information on program parameters and a hands-on tutorial: software: https://github.com/aberer/RogueNaRok/wiki
- The RogueNaRok algorithm is explained in detail in this technical report: http://cme.h-its.org/exelixis/rrdr2011-10.php
- The standalone version of the code also provides an implementation of the unrooted maximum agreement subtree (U-MAST) that is not part of the webserver version.