Video-graph

A fantastic way to visualize spatial patterns in time. This can not be done in the printed paper, but it can be introduced as a .gif file in the supplementary material.

Figure S1. Movie of historical defoliation caused by the Larch Budmoth, Zeiraphera diniana in the European Alps, 1961-1998. Inset graph shows the proportion of all areas that were defoliated in each year. Defoliation polygons were aggregated to form raster estimates of the proportion of 20 x 20 km grid cells that were defoliated. Bubbles are proportional to the amount of defoliation in each cell in each year. Visual inspection of the movie suggests the existence of repeated outbreak waves moving from west to east.

Reference Bjørnstad, O.N., Peltonen, M., Liebhold, A.M. & Baltensweiler, W. (2002) Waves of larch budmoth outbreaks in the European alps. Science 298: 1020-1023. (download pdf) (Supplement) (paper in Science website).
Related info: Ottar Nordal Bjørnstad webpage
Input idea courtesy of Pablo Almaraz

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Shaded confidence intervals

Confidence intervals are usually displayed as dashed lines around the main line. This often creates a messy graph, particularly when plotting more than one trend. The use of shaded areas shown here is an elegant alternative. This allows combining different information in the same graph (e.g. comparing model predictions with empirical data), and may be specially interesting when small (e.g. inset) panels are required. Note that an extension of this technique would be to use different gray intensities to display different confidence intervals around the same main trend.




Figure legend. Black lines correspond to field data, while the white line and the shaded area represent the median and the 90% credible intervals obtained from samples of the posterior distribution of selected models. 

Figure from a previous version of the ms. Martínez, I., Wiegand, T., Camarero, J.J., Batllori, E. & Gutiérrez, E. (2011) Disentangling the formation of contrasting tree-line physiognomies combining model selection and Bayesian parameterization for simulation models. American Naturalist 177: E136-E152. (link)

Input courtesy of Dr. Isabel Martínez Cano

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Table as inset

A powerful combination when space is a big constraint or when information on a table and a graph needs to be interpreted together.

Reference Diabaté et al. (2009) Spatial swarm segregation and reproductive isolation between the molecular forms of Anopheles gambiae. Proc. R. Soc. London B Published online before print September 4, 2009, doi: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1167. (download free pdf)

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Illustrative photo

A good way of explaining at the same time the meaning of the x-axis, and  how the pattern shown in the graph looks like in the real world. Note that the lower feather width in primary 8 is easily appreciated in the picture.

Reference Hingee, M. and Magrath, R.D. 2009 Flights of fear: a mechanical wing whistle sounds the alarm in a flocking bird. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B published online 2 September 2009 doi: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1110 (Journal website)

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