How to plot dendrograms with large datasets?

Question

I am using ape (Analysis of Phylogenetics and Evolution) package in R that has dendrogram drawing functionality. I use following commands to read the data in Newick format, and

Answer 1

It is possible to cut a dendrogram at a specified height and plot the elements:

First create a clustering using the built-in dataset USArrests. Then convert to a dendrogram:

hc <- hclust(dist(USArrests))
hcd <- as.dendrogram(hc)

Next, use cut.dendrogram to cut at a specified height, in this case h=75. This produces a list of a dendrogram for the upper bit of the cut, and a list of dendograms, one for each branch below the cut:

par(mfrow=c(3,1))

plot(hcd, main="Main")
plot(cut(hcd, h=75)$upper, 
     main="Upper tree of cut at h=75")
plot(cut(hcd, h=75)$lower[[2]], 
     main="Second branch of lower tree with cut at h=75")