24 August 2009

Online NEXUS File Viewer

It's been a month since my last post, but I have a very good reason for the hiatus. Namely, I was busy getting married to this woman (at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History) and going on our honeymoon (in Sydney, Australia).

Now that I'm back in California, time to get back to work on Names on Nodes! I've just put together a small demo of two key parts of its functionality: the reading of NEXUS files and the displaying of phylogenetic networks. Click here to see the NEXUS Viewer demo. This application opens NEXUS files and displays the trees in them as a combined phylogenetic network.

Things you need to know:
  1. You must have a NEXUS file stored locally on your computer to use this.
  2. That file should have a TREES section. (If not, the viewer should just display a list of operational taxonomic units.)
  3. This could get messy for NEXUS files with lots of trees. (Although it's kind of neat-looking.)
  4. You can move the nodes around by clicking on them, or click anywhere else to move the entire diagram.
  5. I would dearly love to know if, for some reason, it does not work for a given file.
Enjoy!