Ok, I was able to work it out finally. As I have been aided myself numerous times from posted questions by other users who have reached in the end a solution to their problem, I will put the code that worked for me for future googlers - it is certainly not optimal but it works:
# Initial clustering df=read.table('mydata.txt', head=T, row.names=1) #read file with distance matrix d=as.dist(df) #format table as distance matrix z<-hclust(d,method="complete", members=NULL) x<-as.dendrogram(z) plot(x, xlab="mydata complete-LINKAGE", ylim=c(0,4)) #visualization of the dendrogram clusters<-cutree(z, h=1.6) #obtain clusters at cutoff height=1.6 ord<-cmdscale(d, k=2) #Multidimensional scaling of the data down to 2 dimensions clusplot(ord,clusters, color=TRUE, shade=TRUE,labels=4, lines=0) #visualization of the clusters in 2D map # Local sub-clustering (actually re-clustering on a specific tree node/cluster) h<-as.matrix(d) # transform the distance matrix to a simple matrix. We should ideally work with the initial data table but it sometimes contains an "X" letter preceding labels and there is a risk labels aren't recognized by comparison to name vectors. Distance matrices don't contain the preceding "X" so I transformed it back to a simple matrix (this step might not be required, depending on your initial data table format). clid<-c(1) # Just a column containing the number of the clusters of the initial clustering that you want to pick - separate with commas if more than one clusters,. Here we only want cluster 1. ysub<-h[names(clusters[clusters%in%clid]),] #Remove all rows from the h table that do not begin by the label of a member of cluster 1 ysub<-t(ysub)[names(clusters[clusters%in%clid]),] #We want a rectangular table to be used as distance matrix later on, so we transpose the previous table ysub and remove again the unneeded rows. hrsub<-hclust(as.dist(ysub),method="average") #Perform your preferred hierarchical method on just the initial clusters selected with clid plot(hrsub) ord2<-cmdscale(ysub, k=2) plot(ord2) # Now we can visually "zoom" on the data configuration of just the selected cluster by 2d MDS aa<-silhouette(cutree(hrsub,h=1.2),as.dist(ysub)) #We can perform silhouette analysis localy on the selected cluster (by clid) plot(aa) clusplot(ord2,cutree(hrsub,h=1.2), color=TRUE, shade=TRUE,labels=4, lines=0) # clusterplot of the subclusters Thanks for reading - take care all. PS. If anyone can write all these things in a more efficient way, please feel free to add a comment. -- View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Advice-on-exploration-of-sub-clusters-in-hierarchical-dendrogram-tp4414277p4417419.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.