Software to allow manual adding of branches to to phylogenetic tree

Question

[Wilber0x]

I have a phylogenetic tree, and I would like to add some branches into it manually. Does anyone know of any software that would allow me to do this using a GUI, rather than editing nexus files manually?

I cannot find a way to do this in mesquite.

Answer 1

[Mensur Dlakic]

Adding the branches manually is not recommended, as there is no way to know their lengths and support values without doing a proper reconstruction. I think the right way is to calculate the tree with new entries.

There is a shortcut if you have an alignment for new entries that exactly matches the reference alignment used for the original tree. In that case pplacer will calculate the position of new branches in an existing tree.

[Wilber0x]

I phrased my question incorrectly, I want to add branches manually to a cladogram. The relationships between the species I am interested in are already known, I simply want to map some characters on to the cladogram. Thank you for your help.