Software for evaluating how well a UPGMA or neighbor-joining tree fits a matrix of genetic distances Genetic data analysis made easy.

Evolutionary trees are frequently used to describe genetic relationships between populations. Hierarchical, bifurcating trees are a reasonable model for the evolution of DNA sequences and species, but may or may not be appropriate for describing population structrue in populations connected by gene flow. For example, if populations are arranged in a stepping stone pattern, the genetic relationships between populations will not follow a hierarchical pattern, and traditional neighbor-joining or UPGMA trees may not be appropriate tools for describing the structure of such populations.

The computer program TreeFit was written to analyze how well a tree fits the genetic data the tree was calculated from. TreeFit creates neighbor-joining and UPGMA trees from a genetic distance matrix, and then compares the observed genetic distance between populations with the genetic distance in the tree. The similarity between these distances is express as R-squared, the familiar statistic used to summarize the scatter of points around a least-squares regression line.

The license of this software is Freeware, you can free download and free use this calculator software.