Often phylogenetic analysis is not unanimous. In such cases, the result may be a set of phylogenetic trees rather than a single best tree. This happens in particular in bootstrap analysis. A consensus tree is a representation of a set of phylogenetic trees that attempts to summarise them in a way that captures their most frequently occurring characteristics. More specifically, a consensus tree usually represents the splits that occur in a majority of the trees; in a tree a split corresponds to an edge. The edges are often labelled by the number of trees where the corresponding split occurs.
In other languages
DE: Konsensusbaum, Consensus-Baum
FR: arbre consensus
IT: albero di consenso