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Today, the picture of an evolutionary tree is a very well-known visual image. It is almost impossible to think of the ancestry and relationships of living beings without it. As natural history museums play a major role in the public understanding of evolution, they often present a wide variety of evolutionary trees. However, many studies have shown...
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... 7a, b: Graphical hypothesis on humans' more closely related ancestor, from Our place in evolution in the Natural History Museum, London. Figure 8: Humans' closest living relative, from Our place in evolution in the Natural History Museum, London. Figure 9: Primate Family Tree at the American Museum of Natural History. Figure 10: Phylogeny of vertebrates in the Museum of Natural History, Berlin. ...
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... Even among populations whose interest in evolution is high, such as natural history museum visitors, understanding of key evolutionary concepts is low (Evans et al., 2010;MacFadden et al., 2007). Moreover, interpreting graphical representations of common ancestry (i.e., "tree thinking", a diverse set of skills reviewed by Schramm et al. (2019) is a particular challenge, and understanding of these graphics is often limited and reflects evolutionary misconceptions (Catley and Novick, 2008;Catley et al., 2012;Gregory, 2008;Kummer et al., 2016;Phillips et al., 2012;Torrens and Barahona, 2012). While appropriate instructions can improve understanding of these diagrams, some elements of tree thinking and tree building can be a challenge to develop even at the college level (Dees et al., 2017;Kummer et al., 2016;Novick and Catley, 2017;Smith et al., 2017;Young et al., 2013). ...
There is a need for a better public understanding of evolutionary relatedness including its relevance to socio-scientific issues such as conservation and health. As venues that play an important role in communicating about evolution , natural history museums have an opportunity to explore novel means of enhancing visitor learning in this area. We describe the design, testing, modification, and evaluation of an immersive, problem-solving educational game on the topic of evolution using specimens on display in a natural history museum. Natural History Mystery invites small teams of players to solve a series of puzzles to identify the source of a zoonotic disease. In the process, they use existing exhibits and supporting game components to learn about shared characters, common ancestry, and relatedness. The game was iteratively designed through multiple rounds of trial testing with families and other groups. A summative assessment performed by an external evaluator concluded that, through the game, players had fun, explored the museum in new ways, and felt they learned and developed new skills. The evaluation found that participants learned about evolutionary relationships and made connections between evolution and medical applications. We share details about game/puzzle design and development along with lessons learned, providing a model for other institutions to create their own themed puzzle-hunt game customized to their site.
... For years, many college textbooks and informal education institutions displayed tree diagrams with features known to elicit teleological and anagenetic explanations of evolution (Catley and Novick 2008;MacDonald and Wiley 2012). Examples include diagrams that are angled rather than rectangular in shape that omit indications of the geologic time and that fail to feature other extant taxa in relation to humans (MacDonald and Wiley 2012;Torrens and Barahona 2012). In one study, museum visitors interviewed on exiting an exhibit on evolution, in which various such phylogenetic trees were on prominent display, were still more likely to attribute creationist origins to human beings than they were to non-human organisms (Evans et al. 2010). ...
Biologists use tree diagrams to illustrate phylogenetic relationships among species. However, both novices and experts are prone to misinterpret this notational form. A difficulty with reasoning with cladograms is that intuitive narrative conceptions of evolution as a linear progression interfere with perceiving the hierarchical relationships that tree diagrams are intended to convey. We challenge the use of standard cladograms to teach phylogenetic reasoning and attempt to disentangle the effects of content beliefs, conceptual metaphors, and visual structure. We explain how and why students misinterpret cladograms and investigate the effects of alternative, more intuitive representations and approaches. Through clinical interviews with 24 undergraduate students. Study 1 describes students’ invented representations for depicting the concept of relatedness and investigates the impacts of recontextualizing their representational activities within non-evolutionary contexts. Study 2 examines the effects on students’ reasoning with the standard cladogram after they first invent a diagram of their own. Findings from our mixed quantitative and qualitative analyses display the range of representational resources that students bring to the task of reasoning about relatedness. They suggest potential value in building upon such representations when teaching novices to reason about phylogenies. We observed that the quality of students’ reasoning differed depending on whether students invented a representation, what kind they invented, and in what context. While some findings are promising, others reaffirm the powerful influence of Gestalt perceptual processes on students’ misinterpretations of these difficult, but critical scientific diagrams. We end by discussing implications for instructors and designers.
... Yet, in the popular realm, reading Haeckel's tree as representing a complete phylogeny of life gave rise to multiple non-Darwinian images-eventually named 'Trees of Life'-that helped to spread a hierarchical and progressive view of evolution. These images soon became iconic; and following our idea of showing that the visual representation of human taxonomy has been subject to both biological and historical discordances, the reader will find some late nineteenth and early twentieth century reinterpretations of Haeckel's Stammbaum des Menschen in works aimed to popular audiences (figures 9 and 10; Torrens and Barahona 2012). ...
The authors of this manuscript are interested mainly in meta-scientific studies, particularly in historical reflection on biology. Species in the Age of Discordance being the main theme of this special issue, and taking inspiration from the idea that “biological lineages move through time, space and each other”, we find it thought-provoking to show that just as biological lineages have histories, diverse conceptual categories have also been historically constituted. Moreover their visual representations have been discordant at different levels, such as the concepts of species and race. This article presents how the struggle to achieve a human taxonomy in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe had a fundamental visual component that reflects the discussions and theories that led to important discordances in the racial classification of Homo sapiens and in other species of hominins. Using as main visual artifacts the representation of evolutionary trees, the painting of castes, as well as the natural classification tree of the Mexican naturalist Manuel Ortega from 1877, the authors will show on the one hand how European ideas about human species and race in the scientific mainstream were deployed in the very distinctive situations of Mexico. On the other hand, it will be shown that visual culture was fundamental and decisive in establishing and disseminating scientific accounts of species and race, and how both concepts have interacted in the visual characterization of human diversity, both to define it and to restrain it.
... Recently, the first draft of the Tree of Life including 2.3 million species (21) jumped from the pages of peer-reviewed journals to the widely read science section of the New York Times (22). Museums increasingly incorporate trees into their evolution and biodiversity exhibits and are grappling with determining best practices of communicating information in the form of trees (23)(24)(25). ...
... To help make phylogenetic trees accessible, visualization of trees followed best practices for public communication, including displaying the tree as rectangular instead of slanted or diagonal (23)(24)(25). Nodes were rotated so as to place humans in the middle of the tree, to counter the misconception that evolution has continuously progressed to the origin of humans. We designed the menu to include all three domains of life, enabling us to further messages about evolutionary relatedness. ...
Communicating about science with the public can present a number of challenges, from participation to engagement to impact. In an effort to broadly communicate messages regarding biodiversity, evolution, and tree-thinking with the campus community at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), a public, primarily
undergraduate institution, we created a campus-wide, science-themed meal, “Tasting the Tree of Life: Exploring Biodiversity through Cuisine.” We created nine meals that incorporated 149 species/ingredients across the Tree of Life. Each meal illustrated a scientific message communicated through interactions with undergraduate biology students, informational signs, and an interactive website. To promote tree-thinking, we reconstructed a phylogeny of all 149 ingredients. In total, 3,262 people attended the meal, and evaluations
indicated that participants left with greater appreciation for the biodiversity and evolutionary relatedness of their food. A keynote lecture and a coordinated social media campaign enhanced the scientific messages, and media coverage extended the reach of this event. “Tasting the Tree of Life” highlights the potential of cuisine as a valuable science communication tool.
... Empirically, such representations are suspect because biologists cannot ascertain whether an extinct species is the ancestor of an extant species or its cousin, and the latter inference is several times more secure (given the ubiquity of extinction). Other problematic features common to cladograms in science textbooks and science museums include varying the thickness of its branches without explanation, varying the endpoints of its branches without explanation, segregating "higher" taxa from "lower" taxa, and placing humans on the top-most branch of a vertically arrayed cladogram or the right-most branch of a horizontally arrayed cladogram (Catley & Novick, 2008;MacDonald & Wiley, 2012;Torrens & Barahona, 2012). ...
... The process of discovering the tree is often imagined as a series of blind "robot walks" on the landscape of all possible trees, with the most likely trees on top of likelihood peaks, surrounded by similar trees that are good, but not quite! 16 Some examples of this flourishing literature areO'Hara (1992O'Hara ( , 1998,Baum (2005),Gregory (2008a),Omland et al. (2008),Thanukos (2009Thanukos ( , 2010, McLennan (2010),Meisel (2010),Halverson (2011), Torrens andBarahona (2012). Perhaps similar discourses could be made on network thinking, concerning for example network drawing choices (that are also available as options in computer programs), cognitive tendencies in reading them, biases in recognizing modules and hierarchical levels in networks(Papin et al. 2004). ...
The adaptive landscape is an important diagrammatic concept that was conceived in population genetics. During the Modern Synthesis, in the first half of the twentieth century, the landscape imagery was used to represent evolution on a large scale, aiding in the construction of a common language for a new evolutionary biology. Not only historic adaptive landscapes by Dobzhansky, Simpson, and others are a record of how macroevolution was thought of in those decades; they stimulate reflection on “combination spaces” that underlie them. In fact, any landscape diagram is the three-dimensional transposition of a multidimensional space of combinations of genes, morphological traits, or other kinds of variables. This is an important and enduring general point of awareness: The diagram displays some aspects of the considered space while hiding others, exposing the author and the user to incomplete understanding and to conflating different spaces. Today, macroevolution is studied as a multifarious exploration of spaces of possibilities of all different sorts, interconnected in complex ways: genotype spaces, molecular spaces, morphospaces, geographical spaces, ecological spaces, and genealogical spaces. Actual macroevolutionary stories and outcomes are a subset of the universes of possible combinations—of genes, nucleotides, morphological traits, and environmental variables. Visualizations of macroevolution are a challenge of showing both distinction and correlation between spaces of possibilities.
... Not only does this cause confusion within the profession but it also causes complications when communicating with nonexperts. A number of people have investigated how well phylogenetics is communicated in various settings, such as in the classroom, in textbooks, and in museums (Clark 2001;Catley and Novick 2008;Hellström 2011;MacDonald and Wiley 2012;Torrens and Barahona 2012), and the news is uniformly dismal. Perhaps the biggest issue is ambiguity in the way that phylogenetic trees are presented and described-understanding phylogenies as representations of evolutionary relatedness is a cognitively complex task, and ambiguity can play no part in that process. ...
... Tree diagrams vary greatly in structure, orientation, and the types of information they depict. For example, cladograms and phylograms are based upon cladistic analysis, while other types of phylogenies incorporate additional non-cladistic information into the visualization (Torrens and Barahona 2012). Most cladistic phylogenetic "trees" developed today have little in common with early depictions of the tree of life, and are tree-like only in general outline. ...
... For example, including a time scale on diagrams may help viewers better conceptualize evolutionary time (Catley and Novick 2009). Presenting diagrams oriented horizontally or radically may help viewers avoid the misconception that taxa at the top of the tree are superior to those below them (e.g., Catley and Novick 2008;Torrens and Barahona 2012). Finally, careful consideration of branching topology can help avoid misconceptions about evolutionary advancement and primitiveness among taxa (e.g., Gregory 2008;Catley et al. 2010). ...
... Many of the affordances described in Table 1 suggest important aspects of the theory of evolution. For example, one affordance that tree diagrams can depict well, depending upon the specific tree, is the significance of shared descent and a macroevolutionary pattern that shows a unitary origin of life (Torrens and Barahona 2012). Another positive feature of tree diagrams is their emphasis on cladogenesis as a key feature in macroevolution (Catley and Novick 2008;Gregory 2008). ...
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 tree-based 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.
... Even though cladograms are ubiquitous in biology textbooks (Catley & Novick, 2008) and natural history museums (Torrens & Barahona, 2012), they are notoriously difficult to interpret, partly because they contain unfamiliar notational conventions (Novick & Catley, 2007) and partly because they are amenable to inaccurate, essentialist interpretations of evolutionary change (Shtulman, 2006). Drawing on recent empirical investigations of "tree thinking" in introductory biology students, Gregory (2008) outlined 10 such misconceptions: ...
... Two questions were of primary interest. First, how well do parent-child dyads interpret the information contained in cladograms, given that they are perhaps the most prevalent representation of evolutionary change in modern culture (Torrens & Barahona, 2012) yet are largely misunderstood by most biology students ? Research by Evans et al. (2010) and Spiegel et al. (2012) suggests that museum visitors hold a variety of preconceptions about micro-evolutionary change, some consistent with the principle of natural selection (e.g., need-based reasoning) and some inconsistent with it (e.g., creationist reasoning). ...
The theory of evolution by natural selection has revolutionized the biological sciences yet remains confusing and controversial to the public at large. This study explored how a particular segment of the public – visitors to a natural history museum – reason about evolution in the context of an interactive cladogram, or evolutionary tree. The participants were 49 children aged four to twelve and one accompanying parent. Together, they completed five activities using a touch-screen display of the phylogenetic relations among the 19 orders of mammals. Across activities, participants revealed similar misconceptions to those revealed by college undergraduates in previous studies. However, the frequency of those misconceptions was attenuated by the level of parental engagement, particularly the frequency of turn-taking between parents and children. Overall, these findings suggest that evolutionary reasoning may be improved by the kinds of collaborative discussions fostered by interactive museum displays, so long as the affordances of those displays encourage multiuser interactions.
This research investigates intersectional inequality and its influence on students’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship. The overarching question of this research interest is: “To what extent is the intention to start a business influenced by intersectional inequality?” We conducted a qualitative study with a multi-level approach of an intersectionality analysis according to Winker and Degele (Intersektionalität. Zur Analyse sozialer Ungleichheit. transcript, Bielefeld, 2010). This praxeological intersectionality approach considers three levels of investigation: societal structures including institutions (macro level), interactively produced processes of identity formation (micro level), and cultural symbols (representation level). The results are derived from qualitative narrative interviews and their analysis, using open coding (inductive) as set forth in the grounded theory framework. The results provide evidence of hidden discrimination when it comes to accessing support for starting a business at universities. The results can be condensed into recommendations for action, so instruments can be developed that promote equal opportunities for potential entrepreneurs in tertiary education and, more broadly, in society. The survey was subject to an intersectional multi-level analysis and considers aspects that go beyond the gender perspective. This is a novel approach in entrepreneurship research. This study aims to find out how to sensitize students who were previously skeptical about starting a business to the topic of entrepreneurship.
