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Latin American High Performance Computing Conference

CARLA 2019: High Performance Computing pp 423–437Cite as

Diaforá: A Visualization Tool for the Comparison of Biological Taxonomies

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Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1087))

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.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The exact number of species of macro organisms is unknown because it is estimated that only about 20% of them have been identified [3].

  2. 2.

    The word diaforá stands for difference in Greek.

  3. 3.

    https://www.tdwg.org/.

  4. 4.

    https://www.gbif.org/.

  5. 5.

    http://www.catalogueoflife.org/.

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Acknowledgments

This research is funded in part by Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica. We also want to thank Computer Science student Bryan Hernández for his support on data acquisition and formatting.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Escuela de Computación, Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, Cartago, Costa Rica

    Lilliana Sancho-Chavarría, Carlos Gómez-Soza & Erick Mata-Montero

  2. paluno, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany

    Fabian Beck

Authors
  1. Lilliana Sancho-Chavarría
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  2. Carlos Gómez-Soza
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  3. Fabian Beck
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  4. Erick Mata-Montero
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lilliana Sancho-Chavarría .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Costa Rica Institute of Technology, Cartago, Costa Rica

    Juan Luis Crespo-Mariño

  2. Costa Rica Institute of Technology, Cartago, Costa Rica

    Esteban Meneses-Rojas

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Sancho-Chavarría, L., Gómez-Soza, C., Beck, F., Mata-Montero, E. (2020). Diaforá: A Visualization Tool for the Comparison of Biological Taxonomies. In: Crespo-Mariño, J., Meneses-Rojas, E. (eds) High Performance Computing. CARLA 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1087. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41005-6_29

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41005-6_29

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-41004-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-41005-6

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