Mesquite Features
Below is a brief outline of Mesquite features. Many of the links
within the outline take you to screenshots. To see features recently
added to Mesquite, see the manual page on new
features.
Overview
Primary entities are taxa (which may represent species, genes,
samples, and so on), characters (features or variables), and trees.
- Files may contain:
- Multiple matrices
- Multiple taxa blocks
- Multiple blocks of trees
- Files may be linked into projects
- Multiple files may be open simultaneously
Analyses
- Ancestral state reconstruction — manual
page
- Methods
- Parsimony
- Likelihood
- Mk1 (one parameter) model for categorical data
- Asymmetrical (2 parameter) model for categorical
data
- Display modes
- Processes of Character Evolution — manual
page
- Estimating parameters of categorical characters
- Estimate rate in one-parameter Mk1 model
- Estimate bias of rates of gain versus loss in 2-parameter
model
- Comparative method/character correlation
- Processes of Diversification — manual
page
- Simulations of birth/death process
- Lineage through time plots
- Likelihood inference of a character's effect on speciation/extinction
rates
- Population Genetics & phylogeography — manual
page
- Gene trees can be embedded within population histories
or species trees
- Fit can be displayed graphically
- Deep coalescences and Slatkin & Maddison's s assess
fit of gene tree into species tree
- Simulations and Randomizations — manual
page
- Continuous valued characters
- Tree comparison
- Tree similarity/dissimilarity indices
- Shared partitions
- Patristic distance correlation
- Robinson-Foulds metric, unweighted or weighted (in
TSV)
- Host/parasite, gene/species and other contained/containing
trees can be compared by deep coalescences, Slatkin and
Maddison's s
- Visualizations of tree space (with TSV)
- Instability of terminal taxa among trees
- Tree reconstruction
- Tree search
- Any statistic for tree can be basis of search including
treelength and fit of gene trees into species trees
- SPR, NNI search with single as-is sequence (slow compared
to PAUP & NONA)
- Cluster analysis
- Distances
- Uncorrected distances
- Distances among contained taxa (e.g., for species
trees based on distances among contained genes)
- Algorithms yield multiple trees in case of ties
- Creation of MRP (Matrix Representation with Parsimony)
matrices from trees for use in constructing supertrees
- Other statistics: see under Characters
and Tree
- Charts for character, taxa, trees and nodes summarize calculations
results
Characters
- Multiple matrices
in each file
- Formats supported
- Characters used in calculations can come from:
- Matrices stored in files & edited by user
- Simulationsof character evolution
on a current tree
- Simulated DNA sequence evolution
- Subsitution
models
- Jukes Cantor
- Transition/transversion bias (HKY85)
- General Time Reversible
- Base frequencies
- Equal
- Empirical
- Specified
- Rate variation
- None
- Gamma, with or without proportion invariant
- By codon positions
- Simulated Categorical character evolution
- Mk1 model (one parameter, symmetrical gain/loss)
- Asymm Mk Model (two parameters, bias in gain versus
loss)
- Simulated Continuous
character evolution
- Randomizations and other transformations of matrices
- Bootstrap resampling
- Reshuffling states among taxa
- Rarefaction by characters (randomly deleting characters)
- Rarefaction by cells (randomly changing cells to missing
data)
- Spreadsheet data editor for character matrices
- Edit character states
- Add, delete characters
- Search for cell contents or footnotes
- Simple
Footnotes to characters, taxa, cells of the matrix,
character states
- Multiple Annotations (including comments, images, references)
can be attached to each character, taxon, and cell of matrix
- Characters can be sorted by many criteria
- Character selection
- selection
in one context (e.g. a data editor) is respected in
others (e.g., a scatterplot)
- magic wand to select characters by similar names or
properties
- select characters with probability p
- select n characters randomly
- select variable characters
- select characters by partition
- BLAST searches:
- search for matches to selected region
- import into matrix top BLAST matches
- Display options
- Color cells or text in cells by
- Character state names with categorical data
- Transformations & editing
- Categorical
- Fill (paint bucket)
- Random fill
- Recode
- Reverse sequence
- DNA/Protein sequence
- Reverse complement
- Alignment:
- manual alignment tools allow you to move blocks of the sequence by hand
- automated pairwise alignment tool
- send selected block of matrix to Clustal and incorporate the aligned result
- Continuous
- Fill (paint bucket)
- Standardize
- Random fill (with mean and variance)
- Add random noise
- Log transform
- Add constant; multiply constant
- Utilities to:
- Concatenate matrices
- Compare matrices
- Distances
- Jukes-Cantor, Felsenstein 81,
Kimura 2-Parameter, Felsenstein 84 distances
- Great Circle distances in the
separately-released Cartographer
package
- Auxiliary information stored with characters
- weights
- parsimony
model (unordered, ordered, etc.)
- probability model (Mk1, Jukes Cantor, etc.)
- inclusion/exclusion
- partitions
- Statistics for characters
- Can be viewed in bar charts, scattergrams
and list window
- Options include:
- Values with trees
- likelihood
- parsimony steps
- Likelihood-estimated parameters of character evolution
Percent missing (unassigned)
- Percent gaps (inapplicable)
- Percent polymorphic
- Amino acid size and hydrophobicity
- Compositional
bias (GC/AT bias)
Taxa
- Multiple taxa blocks allowed
- Taxa blocks can be associated (e.g., genes in species)
- Selection
- Selection in one context (e.g. a data editor) is respected
in others (e.g., a scatterplot)
- Magic wand to select taxa by similar names or properties
- Statistics for taxa
- Can be viewed in bar charts, scattergrams and list window
- Options include:
- Continuous character state
- Percent missing data
- Compositional
Bias (AT/GC bias)
- Instability of taxon's relationships among trees
Trees
- Trees used in calculations can come from:
- Trees stored in files and/or edited by users
- Simulations of speciation or population
genetics
- Equal rates Markovian speciation
- Equal rate speciation with subsequent sampling
- Equiprobable trees
- Coalescence simulations
- Coalescence simulations within divergent population
history
- Randomizations of trees
- Randomly augmented tree (taxa added, useful to explore
value of further sampling)
- Randomly rarefied tree
- Reshuffled terminals
- Randomly resolve polytomies
- Add random noise to branch lengths
- Randomly rearrange some branches
- Exhaustive enumerations
- All rerootings of given tree
- All SPR or NNI rearrangements of given tree
- Consensus trees
- Transformations of trees coming from other sources
- Filtered trees coming from other sources
- Trees containing given clade
- Trees having a given value (e.g. symmetry, treelength, etc.) greater or less than number specified
- Tree properties
- branch lengths
- branch widths
(e.g. effective population sizes)
- footnotes and names can be assigned to branches
- hyperlinks to branches
- internal unbranched nodes allowed
- other properties can be added (branch color, etc.)
- Tree manipulation
- Tools in tree window
to:
- Move branches
- Collapse to polytomy
- Reroot
- Cut clade
- Insert unbranched nodes
- Reroot using outgroup
- Adjust branch lengths
- Interactive adjustment
- Menu items to assign or scale branch lengths
- Ultrametricize
- Selection of
branches
- Indivdually
- Select all in clade
- Concatenate or extract tree blocks
- Tree viewing
- Windows
- Tree Window:
interactive browsing and editing of trees
- Multi Tree
window: simultaneous viewing of several trees
- Mirror Tree
window: same tree viewed in mirror image to compare
two analyses
- Dependent tree window: an extra view of tree in Tree
Window
- display results of analyses (e.g., ancestral state reconstruction)
- can show stored
or live-simulated
trees
- Tree display
- Statistics for trees
- Can be viewed in bar
charts, scattergrams, list window and Tree Window
- Options include:
- treelength (parsimony)
- asymmetry of tree
- similarity with other tree or trees
- fit of gene tree with species tree
- correlation between two characters
- estimated parameters of character evolution under
tree
Other features
- Windows have both a graphics
and a text view;
text view gives detailed results of calculations
- Scripting language
with loops and variables
- List windows
allow management of taxa, characters, trees, and other objects
- select objects
- delete objects
- set properties of objects (e.g., assign weights to characters)
- view statistics of objects
- File formats
- NEXUS is native format
- Import/export of other file formats
- NONA/Hennig86 (.ss)
- NBRF
- FASTA
- CLUSTAL
- PHYLIP
- POY
- Simple tables
- Pagel (Multistate/Discrete)
- "Simple NEXUS" files for MrBayes
- Auto-documentation
- Web pages composed automatically to indicate use of tools
and menus
- Explanations
of options embedded in choice dialogs
- Constructing tutorials and lab exercises
- Navigator for tutorials and examples
- Notes window
- Image window
- Can add links to web pages in navigator, tree window
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