Sometimes a tree-building method may result in several equally optimal trees. A consensus tree can be built by showing the commonly resolved bifurcating portions and collapsing the ones that disagree among the trees, which results in a polytomy.

Molecular phylogeny is a relatively new scientific discipline that involves the comparative analysis of the nucleotide sequences of genes and the amino acid sequences and structural features of proteins from which evolutionary histories and relationships, and in some cases also functions, can be inferred.

Topics include: Phylogenetics Basics, Gene Phylogeny Versus Species Phylogeny, & Forms of Tree Representation.