PhyloMatcher: a tool for resolving conflicts in taxonomic nomenclature

Abstract

AbstractSummaryLarge-scale comparative studies rely on the application of both phylogenetic trees and phenotypic data, both of which come from a variety of sources, but due to the changing nature of phylogenetic classification over time, many taxon names in comparative datasets do not match the nomenclature in phylogenetic trees. Manual curation of taxonomic synonyms in large comparative datasets can be daunting. To address this issue, we introduce PhyloMatcher, a tool which allows for programmatic querying of two commonly used taxonomic databases to find associated synonyms with given target species names.Availability and implementationPhyloMatcher is easily installed as a Python package with pip, or as a standalone GUI application. PhyloMatcher source code and documentation are freely available athttps://github.com/Lswhiteh/PhyloMatcher, the GUI application can be downloaded from the Releases page.ContactLswhiteh@unc.eduSupplemental InformationWe provide documentation for PhyloMatcher, including walkthrough instructions for the GUI application on the Releases page ofhttps://github.com/Lswhiteh/PhyloMatcher.