CGGTACGCTT GAGCCCGGGC AATACAGGGT AT GAGCCGTGGC CGGGCACGGT AT ACAGGTTGGC CGTTCAGGGT AA AAACCGAGGC CGGGACACTC AT AAACCATTGC CGGTACGCTT AA The numbers are the number of taxa (different species in the example shown above) followed by the number of characters (aligned nucleotides or amino acids in the case of molecular sequences). Restriction site data must include the number of enzymes as well. Names are limited to 10 characters by default and must be blank-filled to be of that length and followed immediately by the character data using one-letter codes, although the 10 character limit name can be changed by a minor modification of the code (by changing nmlngth in phylip.h and recompiling). All printable ASCII/ISO characters are allowed names, except for parentheses ("(" and ")"), square brackets ("[" and "]"), colon (":"), semicolon (";") and comma (","). The spaces embedded in the alignment are ignored. Many programs for phylogenetic analyses, including the commonly-used RAxML and IQ-TREE programs, use the phylip format or a minor modification of that format called the relaxed phylip format. Relaxed phylip format (sequential): 5 42 Turkey AAGCTNGGGCATTTCAGGGTGAGCCCGGGCAATACAGGGTAT Salmo_schiefermuelleri AAGCCTTGGCAGTGCAGGGTGAGCCGTGGCCGGGCACGGTAT H_sapiens ACCGGTTGGCCGTTCAGGGTACAGGTTGGCCGTTCAGGGTAA Chimp AAACCCTTGCCGTTACGCTTAAACCGAGGCCGGGACACTCAT Gorilla AAACCCTTGCCGGTACGCTTAAACCATTGCCGGTACGCTTAA The primary difference in relaxed phylip format is the absence of the 10 character limit and the removal of the need to blank fill names to reach that length (although filling names to start the character matrix at the same position can improve readability for user). This example of relaxed uses underscores rather than spaces in the names and uses spaces between the names and the aligned character data; it is often good practice to avoid white space within taxon names and to separate the character data from the name when generating files. Like strict phylip format files, relaxed phylip format files can be in interleaved format and include spaces and endlines within the sequence data. The programs that use distance data, like the neighbor program that implements the neighbor-joining method, also use a simple distance matrix format the includes only the number of taxa, their names, and numerical values for the distances: Phylip distance matrix: 7 Bovine 0.0000 1.6866 1.7198 1.6606 1.5243 1.6043 1.5905 Mouse 1.6866 0.0000 1.5232 1.4841 1.4465 1.4389 1.4629 Gibbon 1.7198 1.5232 0.0000 0.7115 0.5958 0.6179 0.5583 Orang 1.6606 1.4841 0.7115 0.0000 0.4631 0.5061 0.4710 Gorilla 1.5243 1.4465 0.5958 0.4631 0.0000 0.3484 0.3083 Chimp 1.6043 1.4389 0.6179 0.5061 0.3484 0.0000 0.2692 Human 1.5905 1.4629 0.5583 0.4710 0.3083 0.2692 0.0000 The number