Intertwining phylogenetic trees and networks

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Summary The fields of phylogenetic tree and network inference have dramatically advanced in the past decade, but independently with few attempts to bridge them. Here we provide a framework, implemented in the phangorn library in R, to transfer information between trees and networks. This includes: (i) identifying and labelling equivalent tree branches and network edges, (ii) transferring tree branch support to network edges, and (iii) mapping bipartition support from a sample of trees (e.g. from bootstrapping or Bayesian inference) onto network edges. The ability to readily combine tree and network information should lead to more comprehensive evolutionary comparisons and inferences.