Table 2.

Visualization concepts organized by their relevance to metagenomic visualization challenges.

Visualization Challenge	Visualization Concept
Representing complex relationships	Circos, Networks
Handling large sets or intersections	Upset plots, Venn diagrams
Visualizing abundance across samples	Heatmap, Bar graphs
Displaying hierarchical data structures	Treemap, Trees, Sunburst charts (Krona)
Understanding taxonomic relationships	Trees, Sunburst charts (Krona)
Illustrating flow or transitions	Sankey plots, Networks, Hive plots
Visualizing multidimensional data	Hive plots, 3D networks, Dimensionality Reduction methods
Standardizing diversity measures	Rarefaction curves
Visualizing genetic arrangements	Gene Map, Genome viewers
Linear representations at higher resolutions	Space-filling maps/curves