Overview

Animal Diversity Web (ADW) is an online database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology at the University of Michigan. One goal of the ADW is to provide Tools for science learning. ADW facilitates inquiry-driven learning, that is, teaching about science by leading students to use the methods of science. Our large database is structured, providing consistent information for all species to foster comparisons. An advanced search tool allows a user to call up species accounts fitting any combination of descriptors. Students can explore for patterns and relationships, learn how to frame and answer scientific questions and, with the help of a good teacher, experience the excitement and satisfaction of doing science. Our long-term goal is to create a database rich enough that students can discover for themselves basic concepts in ecology and conservation biology.

To facilitate this goal I am developing a visualization tool that will help users locate species and make inferences about the relationships between items in the collection. This will done with a interactive treemap based on the Prefuse Flare visualization tool. Flare is a collection of ActionScript 3 classes for building a wide variety of interactive visualizations including basic charts, complex animations, network diagrams, treemaps, and more. Flare is written in the ActionScript 3 programming language and can be used to build visualizations that run on the web in the Adobe Flash Player. Flare applications can be built using the free Adobe Flex SDK or Adobe's Flex Builder IDE.