Communicating Phylogeny: Evolutionary Tree Diagrams in Museums

MacDonald, Teresa; Wiley, E. O.

doi:10.1007/s12052-012-0387-0

Cited by 23 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The view of evolution as a process of transformation unintentionally reinforces ideas of teleology (design) and progression. For trees that include primates, it also inappropriately reinforces anthropocentrism (Catley and Novick 2008;MacDonald and Wiley 2012) and the intuitive explanation that evolutionary change is analogous to developmental change across childhood (Evans et al 2010). Redrawing the hominid tree to avoid linear sequences would not only curtail anagenetic (transformational) interpretations of hominid evolution, but it also would support the verbal message in the exhibit that hominid evolution did not have a linear history.…”

Section: Use Graphic Formats That Facilitate Appropriate Interpretatimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A recent survey suggests that public educational use of trees may be increasing: Approximately one third of informal science institutions surveyed already use evolutionary tree graphics in their exhibitions (MacDonald and Wiley 2012), and zoos and botanic gardens, which have not traditionally included evolutionary diagrams in their displays, are increasingly doing so (MacDonald and Wiley 2012;Weiss 2006). Given the importance of these graphic elements in museum exhibits and the role that museums play in communicating about evolution to the public (Diamond and Evans 2007), it is timely to explore strategies to increase their effectiveness as tools for teaching about evolution and the relationships among taxa.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Visitors may encounter a wide range of tree graphics in museums, even within a single institution (Diamond and Scotchmoor 2006;MacDonald and Wiley 2012). These graphics vary in orientation, geometry, design, and representation of time.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Depicting the tree of life in museums: guiding principles from psychological research

et al. 2014

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The Tree of Life is revolutionizing our understanding of life on Earth, and, accordingly, evolutionary trees are increasingly important parts of exhibits on biodiversity and evolution. The authors argue that in using these trees to effectively communicate evolutionary principles, museums need to take into account research results from cognitive, developmental, and educational psychology while maintaining a focus on visitor engagement and enjoyment. Six guiding principles for depicting evolutionary trees in museum exhibits distilled from this research literature were used to evaluate five current or recent museum trees. One of the trees was then redesigned in light of the research while preserving the exhibit's original learning goals. By attending both to traditional factors that influence museum exhibit design and to psychological research on how people understand diagrams in general and Tree of Life graphics in particular, museums can play a key role in fostering 21st century scientific literacy.

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Section: Use Graphic Formats That Facilitate Appropriate Interpretatimentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Depicting the tree of life in museums: guiding principles from psychological research

et al. 2014

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“…Many other tree-inspired representations of evolution, however, have stronger metaphorical ties to early tree representations like those of Ernst Haeckel. Such representations can be found in popular media, as well as in educational materials and museums (MacDonald 2010).…”

Section: Different Ways To Visualize Treesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While text in the visualization does describe some evolutionary processes, the pictorial (Catley and Novick 2008;Gregory 2008;Catley and Novick 2009;Catley et al 2010;MacDonald 2010;Torrens and Barahona 2012). Therefore, this comparison is necessarily focused on features that are found across a range of diagrams.…”

Section: Concept Groupmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Tree to Map: Using Cognitive Learning Theory to Suggest Alternative Ways to Visualize Macroevolution

Stephens

2012

Evo Edu Outreach

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Diagrams can be important tools for communicating about evolution. One of the most common visual metaphors that unites a variety of diagrams that describe macroevolution is a tree. Tree-based diagrams are designed to provide a phylogenetic framework for thinking about evolutionary pattern. As is the case with any other metaphor, however, misunderstandings about evolution may either arise from or be perpetuated by how we depict the tree of life. Researchers have tried various approaches to create treebased diagrams that communicate evolution more accurately. This paper addresses the conceptual limitations of the tree as a visual metaphor for evolution and explores the ways we can use digital tools to extend our visual metaphors for evolution communication. The theory of distributed cognition provides a framework to aid in the analysis of the conceptual affordances and constraints of tree-based diagrams, and develop new ways to visualize evolution. By combining a new map-based visual metaphor for macroevolution with the interactive properties of digital technology, a new method of visualizing evolution called the dynamic evolutionary map is proposed. This paper concludes by comparing the metaphoric affordances and constraints of tree diagrams and the dynamic evolutionary map, and discussing the potential applications of the latter as an educational tool.

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A roadmap for global synthesis of the plant tree of life

Eiserhardt

Antonelli

Bennett

et al. 2018

American J of Botany

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Providing science and society with an integrated, up-to-date, high quality, open, reproducible and sustainable plant tree of life would be a huge service that is now coming within reach. However, synthesizing the growing body of DNA sequence data in the public domain and disseminating the trees to a diverse audience are often not straightforward due to numerous informatics barriers. While big synthetic plant phylogenies are being built, they remain static and become quickly outdated as new data are published and tree-building methods improve. Moreover, the body of existing phylogenetic evidence is hard to navigate and access for non-experts. We propose that our community of botanists, tree builders, and informaticians should converge on a modular framework for data integration and phylogenetic analysis, allowing easy collaboration, updating, data sourcing and flexible analyses. With support from major institutions, this pipeline should be re-run at regular intervals, storing trees and their metadata long-term. Providing the trees to a diverse global audience through user-friendly front ends and application development interfaces should also be a priority. Interactive interfaces could be used to solicit user feedback and thus improve data quality and to coordinate the generation of new data. We conclude by outlining a number of steps that we suggest the scientific community should take to achieve global phylogenetic synthesis.

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Communicating Phylogeny: Evolutionary Tree Diagrams in Museums

Cited by 23 publications

References 41 publications

Depicting the tree of life in museums: guiding principles from psychological research

Depicting the tree of life in museums: guiding principles from psychological research

From Tree to Map: Using Cognitive Learning Theory to Suggest Alternative Ways to Visualize Macroevolution

A roadmap for global synthesis of the plant tree of life

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