Two axes in one

An intelligent (nice, informative and compact) way of breaking up an axis without the need of doubling the axis in two lines. 

Figure 1. Sample- and individual-based rarefaction and accumulation curves. Accumulation curves (jagged curves) represent a single ordering of individuals (solid-line, jagged curve) or samples (openline, jagged curve), as they are successively pooled.  [...]

Reference Gotelli, N.J. and Colwell, R.C. (2001) Quantifying biodiversity: procedures and pitfalls in the measurement and comparison of species richness. Ecology Letters 4: 379–391. (paper link)

Input courtesy of Dr. Conchita Alonso

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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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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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Highlighting the trend within a cloud of points

Trends in scatter plot clouds could be difficult to appreciate. This is an intelligent way of showing the (mean) trend hidden within the messy cloud of points. The size of the black dots shows the sample size with which the mean was calculated. Note also the clever use of gray to give visual preference to the (more convincing) black dots.

Reference Webb, T.J., Gaston, K.J., Hannah, L. and Woodward, F.I. (2006) Coincident scales of forest feedback on climate and conservation in a diversity hot spot. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 273: 757-765. (download free pdf from journal website)

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On the use of error bars

This and other interesting figures and tables illustrate an informative paper by Cumming et al. on to use error bars in scientific plotting.

Reference: Cumming, G., Fidler, F. and Vaux, D.L. (2007) Error bars in experimental biology. The Journal of Cell Biology, 177: 7–11. (download pdf) (JCB website)

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Panels in front of a map

A clear way of showing plots in its spatial contexts without a waste of space. The light gray of the map precludes the compound graph to become messy. Note also the interesting small shaded histograms inside each panel.

Reference LaDeau SL, Kilpatrick AM & Marra PP. (2007) West Nile virus emergence and large-scale declines of North American bird populations. Nature 447:710-713. doi:10.1038/nature05829 (download pdf) (Nature webpage)

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Histograms in a scatter plot

An interesting way of visualizing the frequency distribution behind the mean  or other aggregated value displayed as a point in a scatter plot.

Reference Montoya, J.M & Solé, R.V. (2003) Topological properties of food webs: from real data to community assembly models. Oikos 102: 614–622. (download pdf) (IngentaConnect)

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