MORPHY: A multiobjective software tool for phylogenetic inference of protein coded sequences

Abstract

Most of software solutions for phylogenetic inference try to find the best phylogenetic tree according to one reconstruction criterion, maximum parsimony or maximum likelihood, making the exploration of different hypothesis based on these two features a complex process. In this work, we present a novel software tool for phylogenetic inference based on a multiobjective approach called MORPHY, which searches for a set of compromise solutions according to the criteria of maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood at the same time. This tool not only works with DNA sequences, but also allows to deal with protein coded datasets. It is implemented using the multiobjective and phylogenetic features of the software MO-Phylogenetics, and the program outputs are a set of optimized trees in Newick format. A consensus tree from all the obtained solutions can also be produced. MORPHY’s executable, source code, and sample datasets are publicly available at the web repository: https://github.com/KhaosResearch/MORPHY.