Family tree, ThruLines and WATO

An interactive, Ancestry-style tree. You can pan and zoom, expand parents, siblings and children in place, search for a person, and set your own home person.

When to use it: Any time you are researching — it is the main workspace for connecting people and DNA.

Reading the result:

• Your home person is personal to your account; the site has a default for logged-out visitors.
• Colour and indicator dots on cards show sex, living status and whether the person has a kit.

A sortable, filterable list of everyone in the tree, with a green highlight and Tree DNA badge on people who have inferred DNA.

When to use it: To find a person quickly, or to filter by name, dates, living status, sex, having a real kit or having Tree DNA.

Takes a kit and checks how its DNA matches line up against the tree, so you can see which branch a match is consistent with.

When to use it: When you have a new match and want to know where in the tree they belong.

ThruLines connect a DNA match to a person in the tree through a shared ancestor, showing the DNA path and the tree path side by side. On the viewer, matching people get a green DNA {cM} badge.

When to use it: To see at a glance which ancestors have DNA evidence behind them.

Reading the result:

• A Confirmed badge means the tree relationship and the DNA cM agree.
• A Mismatch means the tree says one thing and the DNA another — investigate.
• An Estimated badge means the person has not yet been linked to a kit.

Scores every plausible place an unknown match could sit in the tree. For each placement it works out the relationship that placement implies to your known tested relatives, then compares the observed shared cM against the expected distribution and ranks the placements by probability.

When to use it: When you have a mystery match and a tree, but no obvious place for them.

Reading the result:

• A high percentage for one placement is strong support — but only as good as the tree and the cM data.
• A "No possible combination found" message means no placement explains the observed cM (often because every value is far below expectation), so do not trust the top row.

cM distributions: Shared cM Project 4.0.

When matches triangulate onto an ancestor, the shared segments can be accumulated into a virtual kit for that ancestor — so an untested ancestor can appear in match lists, ThruLines and the chromosome browser.

When to use it: When several descendants share segments that point to one ancestor, or when you want to reconstruct an untested parent.

Reading the result:

• The accumulated kit grows as more evidence is added.
• A conflict is recorded when an incoming segment disagrees with what is already accumulated.

A person can be added by hand and also created automatically by a kit upload, producing two nodes. The person page warns you and offers a one-click Review & merge.

When to use it: When the same person appears twice, which breaks DNA highlights and ThruLines because the relationships and the kit sit on different nodes.

Reading the result:

• The merge moves relationships, events, tags and the kit onto the survivor and deletes the duplicate.

Housekeeping for the shared tree — a duplicate report with Keep A / Keep B buttons, plus tree-level settings.

When to use it: When the duplicate banners become numerous, or after a batch of uploads.