- Course overview
- Search within this course
- What is phylogenetics?
- Why is phylogenetics important?
- Major stages in phylogenetic analyses
- Phylogenetics resources at EMBL-EBI
- Discovering the phylogeny of all flowering plants
- Summary
- Quiz: test your knowledge
- Learn more
- Your feedback
- References
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Nodes
Nodes are the points at the ends of branches which represent sequences or hypothetical sequences at various points in evolutionary history.
In the interactive image below, drag the name for each type of node to add labels to the different types of nodes.
Figure 9 A diagram of a tree indicating types of node (Image courtesy of Andrew Rambaut).
The tips
The sequences that we sampled and used to construct our phylogeny occur on single terminal branches, known as the tips or external nodes.
Internal nodes
Internal nodes occur at the points where more than one branch meet and represent the (usually inferred) ancestral sequences.
The root
The root is a very important internal node representing the most recent common ancestor of all sequences in the phylogeny.