Optimal leaf ordering for two and a half dimensional phylogenetic tree visualisation

  • Authors:
  • Tim Dwyer;Falk Schreiber

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Sydney, Australia;Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, Gatersleben, Germany

  • Venue:
  • APVis '04 Proceedings of the 2004 Australasian symposium on Information Visualisation - Volume 35
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Two and a half dimensional graph visualisation is the stacking of a set of related graphs, each drawn in a plane, into the third dimension to support visual comparison. A new aesthetic criterion is introduced for the 2 1/2D visualisation of sets of related phylogenetic trees. This aesthetic requires that the number of crossings between edges linking similar nodes in adjacent trees is minimised allowing a user to easily track the position of a particular species through its lifetime in the stack. We introduce an algorithm for efficiently minimising such crossings and discuss its complexity. Finally, we suggest a new "barrel" layout style which benefits from such crossing minimisation.