A phylogenetic tree is required for computing UniFrac distance matrices. You can load a tree from a file or by providing the tree string directly. This tree must be in Newick format, also known as parenthetic format and New Hampshire format.
Examples
tree <- read_tree("
(A:0.99,((B:0.87,C:0.89):0.51,(((D:0.16,(E:0.83,F:0.96)
:0.94):0.69,(G:0.92,(H:0.62,I:0.85):0.54):0.23):0.74,J:0.1
2):0.43):0.67);")
class(tree)
#> [1] "phylo"