Intertwining phylogenetic trees and networks

The fields of phylogenetic tree and network inference have dramatically advanced in the past decade, but independently with few attempts to bridge them. Here we provide a framework, implemented in the phangorn library in R, to transfer information between trees and networks. This includes: (i) identifying and labelling equivalent tree branches and network edges, (ii) transferring tree branch support to network edges, and (iii) mapping bipartition support from a sample of trees (e.g. from bootstrapping or Bayesian inference) onto network edges. The ability to readily combine tree and network information should lead to more comprehensive evolutionary comparisons and inferences.