Type of Publication: Article in Collected Edition

Diaforá: A Visualization Tool for the Comparison of Biological Taxonomies

Author(s):

Sancho-Chavarría, Lilliana; Gómez-Soza, Carlos; Beck, Fabian; Mata-Montero, Erick

Title of Anthology:

Proceedings of the Latin America High Performance Computing Conference

pages:

423-437

Publisher:

Springer

Publication Date:

2019

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-41005-6_29

Fulltext:

Diaforá: A Visualization Tool for the Comparison of Biological Taxonomies (1.58 MB)

Citation:

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Abstract

We address the problem of visualizing differences between two versions of a biological taxonomy. Given the dynamics of the taxonomic work, taxonomists are often faced with alternative versions of a taxonomy that need to be reconciled. Nevertheless, visual comparison of hierarchies is an open problem that involves several difficult challenges in Visual Analytics. First, how to display not one but two possibly large taxonomies on a fixed-size screen. Second, how to highlight all differences between the two taxonomies. We present Diaforá, an interactive tool that infers and visualizes the differences. Automatic inference is achieved by incorporating taxonomy rules to identify operations such as merging, splitting, and renaming of taxa, among others. Highlighting of differences is accomplished by using the edge drawing technique, which has been enhanced with a number of features suggested by users of a prototype version. Diaforá has been implemented and tested with real world taxonomies such as Bryozoa and Annelida as well as with artificial taxonomies.