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1. Comparative Cognition: Perspectives, Challenges, and Prospects

   Crystal, Jonathon (January 2021, Journal of comparative psychology)

   null (Ed.)

   The publication of the centennial year of the Journal of Comparative Psychology is an occasion to reflect on the state of our discipline. In this article, I focus on one aspect of comparative psychology, namely comparative cognition. This focus stems from my long-standing interest in comparative cognition. The trends and challenges in comparative cognition share many of the trends and challenges in the broader field of comparative psychology. In the first part of this article, I outline my perspective on the field. Next, I consider challenges. I end with a section on prospects for the future. 

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2. The Evolution of Comparative Phylogeography: Putting the Geography (and More) into Comparative Population Genomics

   https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evab176  

   Edwards, Scott V; Robin, V V; Ferrand, Nuno; Moritz, Craig (January 2022, Genome Biology and Evolution)

   Corbett-Detig, Russell (Ed.)

   Abstract Comparative population genomics is an ascendant field using genomic comparisons between species to draw inferences about forces regulating genetic variation. Comparative phylogeography, by contrast, focuses on the shared lineage histories of species codistributed geographically and is decidedly organismal in perspective. Comparative phylogeography is approximately 35 years old, and, by some metrics, is showing signs of reduced growth. Here, we contrast the goals and methods of comparative population genomics and comparative phylogeography and argue that comparative phylogeography offers an important perspective on evolutionary history that succeeds in integrating genomics with landscape evolution in ways that complement the suprageographic perspective of comparative population genomics. Focusing primarily on terrestrial vertebrates, we review the history of comparative phylogeography, its milestones and ongoing conceptual innovations, its increasingly global focus, and its status as a bridge between landscape genomics and the process of speciation. We also argue that, as a science with a strong “sense of place,” comparative phylogeography offers abundant “place-based” educational opportunities with its focus on geography and natural history, as well as opportunities for collaboration with local communities and indigenous peoples. Although comparative phylogeography does not yet require whole-genome sequencing for many of its goals, we conclude that it nonetheless plays an important role in grounding our interpretation of genetic variation in the fundamentals of geography and Earth history. 

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3. Comparative Visualizations through Parameterization and Variability

   https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2018.8506578  

   Smeltzer, Karl; Erwig, Martin (October 2018, 2018 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing)

   Comparative visualizations and the comparison tasks they support constitute a crucial part of visual data analysis on complex data sets. Existing approaches are ad hoc and often require significant effort to produce comparative visualizations, which is impractical especially in cases where visualizations have to be amended in response to changes in the underlying data. We show that the combination of parameterized visualizations and variations yields an effective model for comparative visualizations. Our approach supports data exploration and automatic visualization updates when the underlying data changes. We provide a prototype implementation and demonstrate that our approach covers most of existing comparative visualizations. 

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4. Towards Identification and Mitigation of Task-Based Challenges in Comparative Visualization Studies

   https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/5p73v  

   Pandey, Aditeya; Syeda, Uzma H.; Borkin, Michelle A. (October 2020, 2020 IEEE Evaluation and Beyond - Methodological Approaches for Visualization (BELIV))

   The effectiveness of a visualization technique is dependent on how well it supports the tasks or goals of an end-user. To measure the effectiveness of a visualization technique, researchers often use a comparative study design. In a comparative study, two or more visualization techniques are compared over a set of tasks and commonly measure human performance in terms of task accuracy and completion time. Despite the critical role of tasks in comparative studies, the current lack of guidance in existing literature on best practices for task selection and communication of research results in evaluation studies is problematic. In this work, we systematically identify and curate the task-based challenges of comparative studies by reviewing existing visualization literature on the topic. Furthermore, for each of the presented challenges we discuss the potential threats to validity for a comparative study. The challenges discussed in this paper are further backed by evidence identified in a detailed survey of comparative tree visualization studies. Finally, we recommend best practices from personal experience and the surveyed tree visualization studies to provide guidelines for other researchers to mitigate the challenges. The survey data and a free copy of the paper is available at https://osf.io/g3btk/ 

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5. Comparative analysis of animal lifespan

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-023-00984-2  

   Riddle, Nicole C.; Biga, Peggy R.; Bronikowski, Anne M.; Walters, James R.; Wilkinson, Gerald S.; IISAGE Consortium; Duan, Jingyue Ellie; Gamble, Anthony; Larschan, Erica; Meisel, Richard P.; et al (October 2023, GeroScience)

   Abstract Comparative studies of aging are a promising approach to identifying general properties of and processes leading to aging. While to date, many comparative studies of aging in animals have focused on relatively narrow species groups, methodological innovations now allow for studies that include evolutionary distant species. However, comparative studies of aging across a wide range of species that have distinct life histories introduce additional challenges in experimental design. Here, we discuss these challenges, highlight the most pressing problems that need to be solved, and provide suggestions based on current approaches to successfully carry out comparative aging studies across the animal kingdom. 

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