This is a weak wrapper around ape's drop.tip. Importantly, if asked to drop no species from a phylogeny, it will just return the phylogeny (not an empty phylogeny, as drop.tip) will.
ape
drop.tip
drop_tip(tree, spp)
An phylo object
phylo
A vector of species (one, many, or none) to be removed from tree
tree
phylo object
drop.tip extract.clade
extract.clade