Disclaimer

We would like to remind all visitors of this page that phylogenetic reconstructions always contain a significant potential for errors.

Factors that influence the topology of a phylogenetic reconstruction are numerous and can have a huge impact: different reconstruction methods, quality of phylogenetic signal, amount of characters, correct alignment, taxon set, branch lengths, fit of evolutionary model etc.

Additionally, many other factors bias topologies of phylogenetic trees in particular with sponges such as the quality of the data, correct identification, contamination, hybridization, incomplete lineage sorting... just to mention a few. The trees of the Sponge Genetree Server are not corrected for misidentified samples and sequences of contamination. Only occasionally taxon names were updated following the World Porifera Database.

At this stage, character sets are particularly short opposed to a considerably large taxon set, which even increases the difficulty to find a correct tree.

Therefore, the trees of the Sponge Genetree Server (SGS) 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 based on the given choice of characters, taxa, models and reconstruction methods.

The trees of the Sponge Genetree Server (SGS) not necessarily reflect the author's opinion on the phylogenetic relationships of sponges.