SUMMARY: Picante is a software package that provides a comprehensive set of tools for analyzing the phylogenetic and trait diversity of ecological communities. The package calculates phylogenetic diversity metrics, performs trait comparative analyses, manipulates phenotypic and phylogenetic data, and performs tests for phylogenetic signal in trait distributions, community structure and species interactions. AVAILABILITY: Picante is a package for the R statistical language and environment written in R and C, released under a GPL v2 open-source license, and freely available on the web (http://picante.r-forge.r-project.org) and from CRAN (http://cran.r-project.org).

MOTIVATION: The increasing availability of phylogenetic and trait data for communities of co-occurring species has created a need for software that integrates ecological and evolutionary analyses. Capabilities: Phylocom calculates numerous metrics of phylogenetic community structure and trait similarity within communities. Hypothesis testing is implemented using several null models. Within the same framework, it measures phylogenetic signal and correlated evolution for species traits. A range of utility functions allow community and phylogenetic data manipulation, tree and trait generation, and integration into scientific workflows. AVAILABILITY: Open source at: http://phylodiversity.net/phylocom/.