New version of mergeMappedStates; some tutorials in progress

I just posted a new version of the function mergeMappedStates that can "merge" a set of states with only one entry into a new state (basically, change the name of state mapped on the tree). This might be useful for (for example) converting a tree with mapped states a, b, and c into one with two states: a & not-a (coded as 0 & 1, perhaps) for use with densityMap.

This function version is available in a new phytools build (phytools 0.3-21).

Let's try and use the function to do exactly that:

> require(phytools)
Loading required package: phytools
> packageVersion("phytools")
[1] ‘0.3.21’
> ## simulate tree & character data
> tree<-pbtree(n=100,scale=1)
> Q<-matrix(c(-2,1,1,1,-2,1,1,1,-2),3,3)
> colnames(Q)<-rownames(Q)<-letters[1:3]
> x<-sim.history(tree,Q)$states
> ## simulate stochastic histories
> mtrees<-make.simmap(tree,x,nsim=80,model="ER")
make.simmap is sampling character histories conditioned on the transition matrix
Q =
          a        b        c
a -2.433741  1.216870  1.216870
b  1.216870 -2.433741  1.216870
c  1.216870  1.216870 -2.433741
(estimated using likelihood);
and (mean) root node prior probabilities
pi =
        a        b        c
0.3333333 0.3333333 0.3333333
Done.
> ## now let's merge states to make a "a"/"not-a" set of trees
> statea<-mergeMappedStates(mtrees,c("b","c"),"0")
> statea<-mergeMappedStates(statea,"a","1")
> densityMap(statea,type="fan")
sorry - this might take a while; please be patient

I'm also posting a series of tutorials that will form the basis of the computer exercises I will lead this week at the NESCent Academy Evolutionary Quantitative Genetics Workshop in Durham NC this week. I have put draft version of three of these up so far. Check them out here. These tutorials were all created using knitr and have not yet been proofed thoroughly.