Welcome to the Sponge Genetree Server!
The Sponge Genetree Server aims to summarize genetic information on sponges that has been accumulated in the past years in order to provide an overview on genetic distances and phylogenetic signal of many of the different gene fragments used for sponge phylogenies to date. This approach calculates gene trees under multiple different phylogenetic reconstruction methods for all sponge sequences currently published in databases such as Genbank. The gene trees are updated regularly with the publication of new sequences and refined with more sophisticated reconstruction methods.
The phylogenetic trees of the Sponge Genetree Server are reconstructed under the currently most accepted likelihood based methods and evolutionary models for the individual gene fragments such as secondary structure specific models for ribosomal genes. See the
METHODS section for details.
Datasets for the Sponge Genetree Server are primarily selected on taxon numbers rather than sequence length in order to improve the taxonomic representation. Therefore, the trees provided underlie those methodological issues as described in the
DISCLAIMER and do, as every gene tree, not necessarily represent the poriferan Tree of Life, (which is not the scope of this approach). However they do, as every gene tree, provide a phylogenetic hypothesis.
The project has been developed early 2007 and introduced to the public in Göttingen, Germany, February 2008. It originated out of several individual efforts to generate an overview on the molecular phylogenetic status on demosponges, but will shortly be extended to the information of all sponge classes.