Design phylogenetic trees and evolutionary diagrams from scratch or start with a ready-made template. Add organisms, customize branches, adjust colors and line thickness. Perfect for biology education and research.
Create cladograms automatically from a data table or character matrix. Paste your organisms and traits (present/absent data), and the tool generates a phylogenetic tree instantly. Perfect for biology assignments and lab work.
Build complex hierarchical trees with unlimited depth. Add, remove, and organize clades and organisms using intuitive controls. Label each node with scientific or common names to create detailed phylogenetic relationships.
Adjust line thickness and font size. Choose from preset colors or use a custom color picker. Create professional diagrams that match your style.
The cladogram automatically arranges branches in a clean, readable layout. Equal spacing and proper alignment ensure clarity at any size.
Download your cladogram as a high-resolution PNG image. Perfect for presentations, papers, posters, and educational materials. No watermarks.
Perfect for biology students, teachers, and researchers. Visualize evolutionary relationships, teach phylogenetic concepts, and create study materials.
Completely free with no signup required. All processing happens in your browser, so your data stays private. Works offline once loaded.
Five ready-made cladogram templates load with one click and make perfect starting points for biology assignments, lectures, and study guides. Open the editor, choose a template from the dropdown, then customize it for your needs.
Shows the major vertebrate groups (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) branching from a shared common ancestor. A classic teaching example for any introductory biology unit on vertebrate evolution and the origins of tetrapods, amniotes, and mammals.
Maps relationships among the major primate groups, from lemurs and tarsiers through monkeys, apes, and humans. Useful for human evolution units, anthropology classes, or any lecture covering hominid phylogeny and shared primate traits.
Walks through land plant evolution from non-vascular mosses through ferns, gymnosperms, and finally flowering plants (angiosperms). Highlights the major innovations (vascular tissue, seeds, and flowers) that define each clade.
Compares the four major arthropod groups: insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and myriapods. A useful starting template for invertebrate zoology units or any lesson on the most diverse phylum of animals.
Illustrates the descent of modern birds from theropod dinosaurs, showing how birds are nested within the dinosaur clade. Perfect for paleontology lessons, evolutionary biology units, or demonstrating how cladistics overturned older "reptile vs. bird" thinking.
Start with the default tree structure and customize it. Click the "+" button on any node to add child branches. Enter names for organisms or taxonomic groups. Create nested hierarchies to represent your evolutionary relationships.
Adjust line thickness and font size using the sliders. Choose a color scheme that works for your presentation or publication. Toggle node visibility with zoom controls.
The cladogram updates automatically as you make changes. Preview your phylogenetic tree in real-time to ensure it looks exactly right.
Export your finished cladogram as a high-resolution PNG image. Use it in presentations, papers, educational materials, or anywhere you need to show evolutionary relationships.
A cladogram is a branching diagram that shows hypothesized evolutionary relationships among a group of organisms. Unlike a family tree, the branches do not represent the passage of time or the amount of evolutionary change; they only show the pattern of common ancestry. Two organisms that share a more recent split on the diagram are more closely related to each other than to anything that branches off earlier in the tree.
Read a cladogram from the root outward. The root is the most recent common ancestor of every organism in the diagram. Each internal node represents a hypothesized common ancestor that produced two descendant lineages, and the tips at the end of the branches are the species or groups being compared. Any branch can be rotated around its node without changing the relationships it depicts, much like spinning a hanging mobile, so the tips can appear in many different orders without altering the underlying biology.
A clade is a group consisting of an ancestor and all of its descendants (also called a monophyletic group). Two lineages that descend from the same immediate ancestor are sister taxa. An outgroup is a taxon known to lie outside the group of interest, used to root the tree and polarize character states, while the taxa whose relationships are being investigated form the ingroup. A node where more than two branches emerge is called a polytomy and usually indicates that the data are not strong enough to resolve the relationships. A synapomorphy is a shared derived character: a trait inherited from a common ancestor that defines a clade.
Cladistics is the methodology used to build cladograms. The central idea is that organisms should be grouped by shared derived characters, not by overall similarity or by primitive traits. For example, the fact that birds and mammals both have backbones is a primitive feature shared with all vertebrates and tells us nothing about whether birds are more closely related to mammals than to lizards. When characters conflict, biologists apply the principle of parsimony: the cladogram requiring the fewest evolutionary changes is considered the best-supported hypothesis. The "From Table" feature of this tool uses a character matrix to suggest a tree based on this approach.
These terms are often used interchangeably, but they differ in what the branch lengths mean. A cladogram shows only the branching pattern and treats branch lengths as arbitrary. A phylogram scales branch lengths to the amount of genetic or morphological change along each lineage. A chronogram, or time tree, scales branch lengths to absolute time, usually calibrated with fossils or molecular clock estimates. For most classroom diagrams, textbook figures, and conceptual presentations, a cladogram is the clearest and most appropriate choice.
Several misreadings come up repeatedly. The order of taxa along the tips is not a ranking from "primitive" to "advanced"; branches can be rotated freely. Only the points where branches meet convey information about common ancestry, not the horizontal distance between tips. Visual similarity does not equal close relationship: crocodiles look more like lizards, but crocodiles and birds share a more recent common ancestor and are sister groups within the archosaurs. Finally, an internal node represents a hypothesized common ancestor, not a specific known species or fossil.
A cladogram is a branching diagram that shows hypothesized evolutionary relationships among a group of organisms based on shared derived characters. Each split represents a common ancestor, and the tips represent species or higher taxonomic groups. Unlike phylograms, branch lengths on a cladogram are not meaningful, since only the branching pattern carries information.
Click "Start Creating" to open the editor. Use the tree structure panel on the right to add organisms by clicking the "+" button on any node, then type names for species, traits, or taxonomic groups. Customize the appearance with line thickness, font size, and color options, and download your finished diagram as a PNG when you are done.
Yes. There is no fixed limit on the number of organisms or nesting depth. The cladogram engine automatically adjusts spacing, alignment, and layout to accommodate any number of branches. For very large trees you may want to increase your browser zoom or export at a higher resolution to keep labels readable.
Cladograms are exported as high-resolution PNG images suitable for presentations, papers, posters, and printed handouts. You can also export the underlying tree structure as a JSON file, which lets you save your work, share it with others, or re-import it later to keep editing.
Yes. Cladogram Maker is completely free with no hidden costs, watermarks, or signup required. You can create unlimited cladograms for personal, educational, or commercial use. The site is supported by advertising, which keeps the tool free for everyone.
Yes. Once the page has loaded, the editor runs entirely inside your browser and does not need an internet connection to build, edit, or export your cladogram. Your work is also saved to your browser's local storage, so refreshing or closing the tab will not lose your progress.
Absolutely. The tool is designed for biology classrooms, lab reports, textbooks, lecture slides, study guides, and research papers. Teachers can use it to demonstrate phylogenetic concepts, and students can use it to complete assignments or visualize analyses of their own character matrices.
"Phylogenetic tree" is the general term for any diagram showing evolutionary relationships. A cladogram is one type of phylogenetic tree where branch lengths are arbitrary, and only the branching pattern is meaningful. Phylograms scale branches to the amount of evolutionary change, and chronograms scale them to time. If you do not need to display change or time, a cladogram is usually the clearest choice.
Yes. Pick from the preset color swatches in the settings panel, or open the custom color picker to choose any color in the spectrum. The color is applied to all branches in the tree, so you can quickly match your school branding, journal style, or presentation theme.
Yes. Your cladogram is automatically saved to your browser's local storage as you edit, so you can close the tab and return later without losing your work. For long-term storage or to move your tree between devices, use the Export button to download a JSON file, which you can re-import at any time.
Yes. Click the "From Table" button in the settings panel to open the character matrix editor. Enter your organisms in the rows and traits in the columns, using 1 for present and 0 for absent, then click Generate. The tool builds a cladogram by grouping organisms with shared derived characters, which is ideal for biology homework, lab reports, and introductory phylogenetics exercises.