Animating and exploring phylogenies with fibre plots

Despite the progress that has been made in many other aspects of data visualisation, phylogenies are still represented in much the same way as they first were by Darwin. In this brief essay, I give a short review of what I consider to be some recent major advances, and outline a new kind of phylogenetic visualisation. This new graphic, the fibre plot, uses the metaphor of sections through a tree to describe change in a phylogeny. I suggest it is a useful tool in gaining an rapid overview of the timing and scale of diversification in large phylogenies.