Visualizing the meaning of log-scales

Plotting in log-scale is often the only way of displaying a given dataset. Unfortunately, log-scales are more difficult to understand even for trained eyes. Often, it is used the formula "note the log-scale of y-axis" in the figure legend. However, it hardly makes the plot easier to follow for log-adverse people. This plot shows an elegant way to display the untransformed data and, at the same time, benefiting from the illustrative power of a log-scale. 

Reference Hebert, P.D.N., Ratnasingham, S. and deWaard, J.R. (2003) Barcoding animal life: cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 divergences among closely related species. 2003 Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B S96-S99 270 doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2003.0025

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Breaking plotting rules

The interesting thing about this plot is the reversed x-axis: from left to right "vegetation height" goes from tall to short vegetation. Note the right-hand arrow indicating this unusual x-axis scale. The authors explain that this was done to "...emphasize that islands with low vegetation are more dissimilar from Staniel than are islands with high vegetation.".

More generally, this plot illustrates that there are apparently fixed plotting rules that can be (carefully) broken in a very interesting way.

Reference J.B. Losos, K.I. Warheit and T.W. Schoener (1997) Adaptive differentiation following experimental island colonization in Anolis lizards. Nature 387: 70-73.  (download pdf)

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