Dendrogram

Not to be confused with Dendrogramma.

Dendrogram of a hierarchical clustering (UPGMA) with the height of the nodes (adapted from bacterial 5S rRNA sequence data).

Dendrogram output for hierarchical clustering of marine provinces using presence / absence of sponge species.

A dendrogram of the Tree of Life. This phylogenetic tree is adapted from Woese et al. rRNA analysis. The vertical line at bottom represents the last universal common ancestor (LUCA).

Heatmap of RNA-Seq data showing two dendrograms in the left and top margins.

A dendrogram is a diagram representing a tree graph. This diagrammatic representation is frequently used in different contexts:

• in hierarchical clustering, it illustrates the arrangement of the clusters produced by the corresponding analyses.
• in computational biology, it shows the clustering of genes or samples, sometimes in the margins of heatmaps.
• in phylogenetics, it displays the evolutionary relationships among various biological taxa. In this case, the dendrogram is also called a phylogenetic tree.

The name dendrogram derives from the two ancient greek words δένδρον (déndron), meaning "tree", and γράμμα (grámma), meaning "drawing, mathematical figure".