Tree collapse

This tool uses bootstrap values in a phylogenetic tree as a benchmark for visualizing statistical support of a given barcode dataset. This is done by collapsing all the branches that are supported by bootstrap values smaller than a user-selected cut-off value. Although short barcode sequences are not strong phylogenetic markers at deep levels, they are excellent for species-level divergences. A high bootstrap cut-off (i.e. 100%) leads to collapsing most of the branches deeper than species-level, but majority of the species-level branches are kept intact. However, exceptionally closely related species may require longer sequences to gain a very high bootstrap support. This analysis was first introduced in Hajibabaei et al. 2006.