[Taxacom] Visualizing Biodiversity

[Roderic Page]

Dear Tony,

OK, I'll take the bait.

EOL's viewer is a treemap, for a less flashy version see http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/tm/ which is pretty simple to implement. Another version I used for BioStor (since removed) is described here : http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2010/01/displaying-taxonomic-coverage-using.html

One limitation of standard treemaps is that you don't get to see individual items. Quantum treemaps are a different approach which I quite like, see Mashing up NCBI and Wikipedia using treemaps for an example.

Another approach is to display the classification as a tree. SpaceTrees are pretty, see http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2009/06/visualising-taxonomic-classifications.html

If you want simply to display relative numbers, and provide a way to drill down, then the treemap approach is probably the simplest. Implementation is relatively straightforward.

Regards

Rod

On 31 Aug 2011, at 05:08, <Tony.Rees at csiro.au> <Tony.Rees at csiro.au> wrote:

> Dear Taxacomers,
> 
> In my efforts to produce a listing of all genera I end up with, among other things, summary data on higher levels of my taxonomic hierarchy plus the number of child taxa each contains (current example by phylum: http://www.marine.csiro.au/mirrorsearch/ir_search.list_phylum). I realise that this tabular approach is pretty much as unexciting as it gets so was wondering about an improved visual manner to present this type of information, preferably in the form  of a navigable hierarchy as per the present hyperlinks.
> 
> One example I have come across which seems really neat is Kris Urie's EOL Tree Viewer (aka "VOLE" - Viewer of life on EOL), for example starting point see http://kurie.github.com/EOL-tree-viewer/#COL, however I was wondering whether taxacomers have more suggestions or personal favourites worth looking at. Of course I would also have to work out how to load in my data, but that's a detail maybe.
> 
> All suggestions / examples welcome (and may even be used on my site if I can figure out how to implement one or more of them). (Also I have a feeling that Rod Page may have some experience in this area). Of course it would also be nice if someone could take this on as a pet project for free, however I would never dream of asking such a thing (for comparison / light relief see http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p.html).
> 
> Regards - Tony
> 
> Tony Rees
> Manager, Divisional Data Centre,
> CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research,
> GPO Box 1538,
> Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia
> Ph: 0362 325318 (Int: +61 362 325318)
> Fax: 0362 325000 (Int: +61 362 325000)
> e-mail: Tony.Rees at csiro.au
> Manager, OBIS Australia regional node, http://www.obis.org.au/
> Biodiversity informatics research activities: http://www.cmar.csiro.au/datacentre/biodiversity.htm
> Personal info: http://www.fishbase.org/collaborators/collaboratorsummary.cfm?id=1566
> 
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---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
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