Large phylogenomics data sets require fast tree inference methods, especially for maximum-likelihood (ML) phylogenies. Fast programs exist, but due to inherent heuristics to find optimal trees, it is not clear whether the best tree is found. Thus, there is need for additional approaches that employ different search strategies to find ML trees and that are at the same time as fast as currently available ML programs. We show that a combination of hill-climbing approaches and a stochastic perturbation method can be time-efficiently implemented. If we allow the same CPU time as RAxML and PhyML, then our software IQ-TREE found higher likelihoods between 62.2% and 87.1% of the studied alignments, thus efficiently exploring the tree-space. If we use the IQ-TREE stopping rule, RAxML and PhyML are faster in 75.7% and 47.1% of the DNA alignments and 42.2% and 100% of the protein alignments, respectively. However, the range of obtaining higher likelihoods with IQ-TREE improves to 73.3–97.1%. IQ-TREE is freely available at http://www.cibiv.at/software/iqtree.

ModelFinder is a fast model-selection method that greatly improves the accuracy of phylogenetic estimates. Model-based molecular phylogenetics plays an important role in comparisons of genomic data, and model selection is a key step in all such analyses. We present ModelFinder, a fast model-selection method that greatly improves the accuracy of phylogenetic estimates by incorporating a model of rate heterogeneity across sites not previously considered in this context and by allowing concurrent searches of model space and tree space.

IQ-TREE (http://www.iqtree.org, last accessed February 6, 2020) is a user-friendly and widely used software package for phylogenetic inference using maximum likelihood. Since the release of version 1 in 2014, we have continuously expanded IQ-TREE to integrate a plethora of new models of sequence evolution and efficient computational approaches of phylogenetic inference to deal with genomic data. Here, we describe notable features of IQ-TREE version 2 and highlight the key advantages over other software.

The standard bootstrap (SBS), despite being computationally intensive, is widely used in maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyses. We recently proposed the ultrafast bootstrap approximation (UFBoot) to reduce computing time while achieving more unbiased branch supports than SBS under mild model violations. UFBoot has been steadily adopted as an efficient alternative to SBS and other bootstrap approaches. Here, we present UFBoot2, which substantially accelerates UFBoot and reduces the risk of overestimating branch supports due to polytomies or severe model violations. Additionally, UFBoot2 provides suitable bootstrap resampling strategies for phylogenomic data. UFBoot2 is 778 times (median) faster than SBS and 8.4 times (median) faster than RAxML rapid bootstrap on tested data sets. UFBoot2 is implemented in the IQ-TREE software package version 1.6 and freely available at http://www.iqtree.org.

This article presents W-IQ-TREE, an intuitive and user-friendly web interface and server for IQ-TREE, an efficient phylogenetic software for maximum likelihood analysis. W-IQ-TREE supports multiple sequence types (DNA, protein, codon, binary and morphology) in common alignment formats and a wide range of evolutionary models including mixture and partition models. W-IQ-TREE performs fast model selection, partition scheme finding, efficient tree reconstruction, ultrafast bootstrapping, branch tests, and tree topology tests. All computations are conducted on a dedicated computer cluster and the users receive the results via URL or email. W-IQ-TREE is available at http://iqtree.cibiv.univie.ac.at. It is free and open to all users and there is no login requirement.

Nonparametric bootstrap has been a widely used tool in phylogenetic analysis to assess the clade support of phylogenetic trees. However, with the rapidly growing amount of data, this task remains a computational bottleneck. Recently, approximation methods such as the RAxML rapid bootstrap (RBS) and the Shimodaira–Hasegawa-like approximate likelihood ratio test have been introduced to speed up the bootstrap. Here, we suggest an ultrafast bootstrap approximation approach (UFBoot) to compute the support of phylogenetic groups in maximum likelihood (ML) based trees. To achieve this, we combine the resampling estimated log-likelihood method with a simple but effective collection scheme of candidate trees. We also propose a stopping rule that assesses the convergence of branch support values to automatically determine when to stop collecting candidate trees. UFBoot achieves a median speed up of 3.1 (range: 0.66–33.3) to 10.2 (range: 1.32–41.4) compared with RAxML RBS for real DNA and amino acid alignments, respectively. Moreover, our extensive simulations show that UFBoot is robust against moderate model violations and the support values obtained appear to be relatively unbiased compared with the conservative standard bootstrap. This provides a more direct interpretation of the bootstrap support. We offer an efficient and easy-to-use software (available at http://www.cibiv.at/software/iqtree) to perform the UFBoot analysis with ML tree inference.