Rooted vs Unrooted Phylogenetic Tree

Phylogeny is an important field that explores the life on earth through the time. It reveals the
connection between organisms with their ancestors and descendants. The relationships between
organisms are diagrammatically represented by various tree-like representations such as
dendogram, cladogram, phenogram, phylogram, etc. A phylogenetic tree is a branching tree-like
diagram which explains the phylogenetic relationships between organisms with the amount of
evolutionary distance. There are two main types of phylogenetic trees known as rooted and
unrooted. The key difference between the rooted and unrooted phylogenetic tree is that rooted
tree shows the most basal ancestor of the tree while unrooted phylogenetic tree does not
show an ancestral root.

What is a Rooted Phylogenetic Tree?

A rooted phylogenetic tree serves as a useful diagram which shows the evolutionary history. It
has a basal node which is called the root, representing the common ancestor of all the groups of
the tree. The root of a tree is considered as the oldest point in the tree which represents the last
common ancestor of all groups included in the tree. Hence, a rooted tree shows the direction of
evolutionary time. From a single species of a rooted tree, the common ancestry or the species
ancestor can be found by tracing back to the basal node. Since the rooted tree depicts the
direction of evolutionary time, it is easy to find the older or newer groups it has. A rooted tree
can be used to study the entire groups of organisms. Accurate rooting of a phylogenetic tree is an
important and crucial factor since inaccurate rooting can result in wrong interpretations of
genetic changes between organisms and their directionality of the evolution.

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 Figure 01: A Rooted Phylogenetic Tree

What is an Unrooted Phylogenetic Tree?

An unrooted phylogenetic tree is a phylogenetic diagram which lacks a common ancestor or a
basal node. This type of a tree does not indicate the origin of evolution of the groups of interest.
It depicts only the relationship between organisms irrespective of the direction of the
evolutionary time line. Therefore, it is difficult to study the evolutionary relationships of the
groups with respect to time using an unrooted tree.
There are two main ways to root an unrooted phylogenetic tree. They are
 Finding an outgroup – This requires prior knowledge about the relationships between taxa.
Then a taxon which lies outside the group can be used as an outgroup to draw a rooted
phylogenetic tree
 Finding the midpoint or distance – The midpoint of the most distant two taxa in the tree
can be assumed as a root for the phylogenetic tree.

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What is the difference between Rooted and Unrooted Phylogenetic
Tree?

Rooted vs Unrooted Phylogenetic Tree

A rooted phylogenetic tree is a An unrooted phylogenetic tree shows the relationships
diagram which shows the last between organisms without showing the common
common ancestor of the groups. ancestor.

Node

It has a node (root). It does not have a node.

Direction of Evolution

It has a direction to indicate the It does not specify an evolutionary relationship.

evolutionary time.

Attitude towards Others

The tree allows to determining The tree does not allow to talk about ancestor –
the ancestor – descendant descendant relationship.
relationship between groups.

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Summary – Rooted vs Unrooted Phylogenetic Tree
A phylogenetic tree represents the evolutionary pathways and connections between organisms
using a branched tree-like diagrams. Phylogenetic tress can be rooted or unrooted. A rooted tree
has a node at the base, representing the common ancestor which connects all interest groups. An
unrooted tree shows the relationships between organisms. However, it does not depict the
common ancestor that all the groups share. This is the difference between rooted and unrooted
phylogenetic tree.