Visualizing co-phylogenetic reconciliations

We introduce a hybrid metaphor for the visualization of the reconciliations of co-phylogenetic trees, that are mappings among the nodes of two trees with constraints on the leaves. The typical application is the visualization of the co-evolution of hosts and parasites in biology. Our strategy combines a space-filling and a node-link approach. Differently from traditional methods, it guarantees an unambiguous and downward representation whenever the reconciliation is time-consistent (i.e., biologically-feasible). We address the problem of the minimization of the number of crossings in the representation, by giving a characterization of planar instances and by establishing the complexity of the problem. Finally, we propose heuristics for computing representations with few crossings.