Visualizations for taxonomic and phylogenetic trees

Motivation. Despite substantial efforts to develop and populate the back-ends of biological databases, front-ends to these systems often rely on taxonomic expertise. This research applies techniques from human-computer interaction research to the biodiversity domain.

Results. We developed an interactive node-link tool, TaxonTree, illustrating the value of a carefully designed interaction model, animation, and integrated searching and browsing towards retrieval of biological names and other information. Users tested the tool using a new, large integrated dataset of animal names with phylogenetic-based and classification-based tree structures. These techniques also translated well for a tool, DoubleTree, to allow comparison of trees using coupled interaction. Our approaches will be useful not only for biological data but as general portal interfaces.

Availability.

A working version of TaxonTree, with Tree A, and a video demonstration of DoubleTree, showing Trees A and C, are available at {{http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/biodiversity}}.

Tree B is available in XML at {{http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/iv03contest/index.shtml}}.