Making simple phylogenetic dendrogram (tree) from a list of species

Question

I want to make a simple phylogenetic tree for a marine biology course as an educative example. I have a list of species with taxonomic rank:

    Group <- c("Benthos","Benthos","Benthos","Benthos","Benthos","Benthos","Zooplankton","Zooplankton","Zooplankton","Zooplankton",
"Zooplankton","Zooplankton","Fish","Fish","Fish","Fish","Fish","Fish","Phytoplankton","Phytoplankton","Phytoplankton","Phytoplankton")
Domain <- rep("Eukaryota", length(Group))
Kingdom <- c(rep("Animalia", 18), rep("Chromalveolata", 4))
Phylum <- c("Annelida","Annelida","Arthropoda","Arthropoda","Porifera","Sipunculida","Arthropoda","Arthropoda","Arthropoda",
"Arthropoda","Echinoidermata","Chorfata","Chordata","Chordata","Chordata","Chordata","Chordata","Chordata","Heterokontophyta",
"Heterokontophyta","Heterokontophyta","Dinoflagellata")
Class <- c("Polychaeta","Polychaeta","Malacostraca","Malacostraca","Demospongiae","NA","Malacostraca","Malacostraca",
"Malacostraca","Maxillopoda","Ophiuroidea","Actinopterygii","Chondrichthyes","Chondrichthyes","Chondrichthyes","Actinopterygii",
"Actinopterygii","Actinopterygii","Bacillariophyceae","Bacillariophyceae","Prymnesiophyceae","NA")
Order <- c("NA","NA","Amphipoda","Cumacea","NA","NA","Amphipoda","Decapoda","Euphausiacea","Calanioda","NA","Gadiformes",
"NA","NA","NA","NA","Gadiformes","Gadiformes","NA","NA","NA","NA")                     
Species <- c("Nephtys sp.","Nereis sp.","Gammarus sp.","Diastylis sp.","Axinella sp.","Ph. Sipunculida","Themisto abyssorum","Decapod larvae (Zoea)",
"Thysanoessa sp.","Centropages typicus","Ophiuroidea larvae","Gadus morhua eggs / larvae","Etmopterus spinax","Amblyraja radiata",
"Chimaera monstrosa","Clupea harengus","Melanogrammus aeglefinus","Gadus morhua","Thalassiosira sp.","Cylindrotheca closterium",
"Phaeocystis pouchetii","Ph. Dinoflagellata")   
dat <- data.frame(Group, Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Species)
dat

I would like to get a dendrogram (cluster analysis) and use Domain as the first cutting point, Kindom as the second, Phylum as the third, etc. Missing values should be ignored (no cutting point, a straight line instead). Group should be used as a coloring category for the labels.

I am a bit uncertain how to make a distance matrix from this data frame. There are a lot of phylogenetic tree packages for R, they seem to want newick data / DNA / other advanced information. Thus help with this would be appreciated.

Answer 1

It's probably a bit lame to answer my own question, but I found an easier solution. Maybe it helps someone one day.

library(ape)
taxa <- as.phylo(~Kingdom/Phylum/Class/Order/Species, data = dat)

col.grp <- merge(data.frame(Species = taxa$tip.label), dat[c("Species", "Group")], by = "Species", sort = F)

cols <- ifelse(col.grp$Group == "Benthos", "burlywood4", ifelse(col.grp$Group == "Zooplankton", "blueviolet", ifelse(col.grp$Group == "Fish", "dodgerblue", ifelse(col.grp$Group == "Phytoplankton", "darkolivegreen2", ""))))

plot(taxa, type = "cladogram", tip.col = cols)

Note that all columns have to be factors. This demonstrates the work flow with R. It takes a week to find out something, although the code itself is just a couple of rows =)