Real-time and remote MCMC trace inspection with Beastiary

Bayesian phylogenetic methods have gained substantial popularity in the last decade, due to their ability to incorporate independent information and fit complex models. Most Bayesian implementations rely on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), which in turn requires careful interpretation of the output to assess the statistical validity of any resulting inferences. Here we describe Beastiary, a package for real-time and remote inspection of log flies generated by MCMC analysis commonly utilised in Bayesian phylogenetic analysis. Beastiary is an easily deployed web-sever that can be used to summarise and visualise the output of many popular software packages including BEAST, BEAST2, RevBayes, and MrBayes. We describe the overall design and implementation of Beastiary and some typical use cases, with a particular focus on the capability of monitoring analyses from remote servers.