MonoPhy: A simple R package to find and visualize monophyly issues
Background. The monophyly of taxa is an important attribute of a phylogenetic tree, as a lack of it may hint at shortcomings of either the tree or the current taxonomy and can misguide subsequent analyses. While monophyly is conceptually simple, it is manually tedious and time consuming to assess on modern phylogenies of hundreds to thousands of species. Results. The R package MonoPhy allows assessment and exploration of monophyly of taxa in a phylogeny. It can assess the monophyly of genera using the phylogeny only, and with an additional input file, any other desired higher taxa or unranked groups can be checked as well. Conclusion. Summary tables, easily subsettable results and several visualization options allow quick and convenient exploration of monophyly issues, thus making MonoPhy a valuable tool for any researcher working with phylogenies.