EcoLens and TreePlus: Tools for exploring ecological interaction data

Cynthia Sims Parr

Bongshin Lee, Ben BedersonUniversity of Maryland, College Park

Ecological interaction webs

From http://www.geog.ouc.bc.ca/physgeog/contents/9o.html

Ultimate problem: Computational approach to ecological interaction analysis

Database

Interaction Web

Database

ADWattributes

Graph vis tools

Algorithms

Test predictions

Predictions

Explore forpatterns

PhylogeniesClassifications

Food web visualizationWilliams, Martinez, Dunne, et al.

Web, network, or “graph” representations

Node-link graphs Matrix List of connected pairs Trees with cross-links Coupled lists

TaxonTree

Data sources

Source # webs # interactors # links

Webs on the Web 17 1537 6328

Interaction Web DB 26 2177 9882

EcoWEB 213 4064 6363

Animal Diversity Web 1 1012 2869

Total 257 8,790 25,442

Interface Goals

Provide enough overview that users can decide where they want to explore

Bring large datasets down to human scales Support systematic exploration

dataset selection and comparison discovery of potentially interesting patterns data cleaning

Provide environment for examining modeling results

EcoLens and TreePlus

Demo

Goal Solution

Provide enough overview that users can decide where they want to explore

Bring large datasets down to human scales

Support systematic exploration

EcoLens

Overview first, zoom and filter, details on demand”

TreePlus

“Plant a seed and watch it grow”

EcoLens coupled lists

TreePlus aligned, readable trees

Next steps

Evaluate with food web researchers Visualize attributes of nodes and links Test against other graph viz alternatives Integrate with robust input and output tools Incorporate statistical computational tools

Broader implications

Generalizable framework for highly interconnected data: NetLens and TreePlus

Expanding the scale of web analysis among ecologists

Acknowledgements

Sarah Hankerson, Paula Rodgers, Bill Fagan and other members of the Ecological Informatics class

NSF ITR/IDM Microsoft Booze Allen Hamilton

http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/biodiversity