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Spirograph inspired visualization of ecological networks

Published: 08 August 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Ecological networks are directed weighted graphs for representing direct and indirect relationships between species in ecosystems. These complex cyclic networks play an important role in understanding an ecosystem's dynamics. In this paper, we present a visualization layout inspired by Spirograph patterns, specifically designed for ecological networks. Our visualization supports both the direct and indirect quantities commonly required in ecological studies. The layout is circular to reflect the containment of the represented ecosystem and to clarify which connections are internal and which are external. In this layout, nodes are arranged along the circumference of a large circle as arcs, and edges are mapped to thorn-like shapes that represent the direction and the weight of the edge. Finally, we illustrate the use of this visualization on several example ecological networks.

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cover image ACM Conferences
CAe '14: Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Aesthetics
August 2014
100 pages
ISBN:9781450330190
DOI:10.1145/2630099
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 08 August 2014

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Author Tags

  1. ecological network
  2. visualization
  3. weighted directed graph

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Cited By

View all
  • (2020)An Algorithmic Solution for Storing Big Data on the DNA Sequence2020 IEEE 6th World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT)10.1109/WF-IoT48130.2020.9221056(1-4)Online publication date: Jun-2020
  • (2020)Interaction Techniques for Chord Diagrams2020 24th International Conference Information Visualisation (IV)10.1109/IV51561.2020.00015(28-37)Online publication date: Sep-2020
  • (2019)Introducing Electron Probability Density to High School Students Using a Spiral Drawing ToyJournal of Chemical Education10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b0039196:3(500-502)Online publication date: 22-Jan-2019
  • (2016)Daisy visualization for graphsProceedings of the Joint Symposium on Computational Aesthetics and Sketch Based Interfaces and Modeling and Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering10.5555/2981324.2981340(103-112)Online publication date: 7-May-2016

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