DiscoVista: interpretable visualizations of gene tree discordance

TL;DR

DiscoVista is a tool that provides clear visualizations to interpret gene tree discordance in phylogenomics, aiding researchers in understanding incongruences among species and gene trees.

Contribution

It introduces a new software, DiscoVista, for visualizing and quantifying discordance in phylogenomic analyses, addressing a key interpretive challenge.

Findings

Enables visualization of discordance among phylogenetic trees

Quantifies discordance and explores potential causes

Facilitates interpretation of complex phylogenomic data

Abstract

Phylogenomics has ushered in an age of discordance. Analyses often reveal abundant discordances among phylogenies of different parts of genomes, as well as incongruences between species trees obtained using different methods or data partitions. Researchers are often left trying to make sense of such incongruences. Interpretive ways of measuring and visualizing discordance are needed, both among alternative species trees and gene trees, especially for specific focal branches of a tree. Here, we introduce DiscoVista, a publicly available tool that creates a suite of simple but interpretable visualizations. DiscoVista helps quantify the amount of discordance and some of its potential causes.