Space, time, form: viewing the Tree of Life

OneZoom: A Fractal Explorer for the Tree of Life

“…Recent methods of phylogenetic tree visualization attempt to buy extra space in the paper paradigm—for example, by using walls consisting of multiple displays (see Figure 7a in [3]). This approach is costly and does not give tree visualization capabilities to the masses, which is what is really needed.…”

“…Other currently available methods make exploration of phylogenetic trees interactive, enabling the user to expand or magnify parts of the tree [5] that may be too small to see in detail at the scale of the screen. Hyperbolic tree browsers [6],[7] are a good example of this and they can display large trees, but users do not find them intuitive [3] and we don't see the inclusion of rich metadata as being realistically achievable. An optimal tree viewer should be able to 1) handle large megatrees; 2) be explored in an intuitive way; 3) incorporate significant amounts of metadata; and 4) be visually appealing and immersive, especially if public users are expected.…”

<strong>Correcting the disconnect between phylogenetics and biodiversity informatics</strong>

“…While not explicitly an evolutionary framework, each classification essentially is a backbone "tree" with polytomies at most nodes (Page 2006(Page , 2008(Page , 2012. In principle, these classification schemes should be consistent with current phylogenetic evidence.…”

Lifemap: Exploring the Entire Tree of Life

“…More generally, the visualization of very large trees still remains a challenge [8]. A parallel has been drawn earlier between what has been achieved in cartography with the development of Google maps or OpenStreetMaps [9] (OSM), and what could be done for exploring the ToL [8,10]. The logic behind the use of the cartographic paradigm for visualizing a taxonomy is straightforward: like geographic entities (countries, regions, cities, etc.…”