Figures contained in scientific reports are a neglected area of the design world. Typically intended for display to academic audiences in the cramped confines of a journal, they tend to be utilitarian and esoteric -- yet while looking through hundreds of articles in the course of 2012, certain figures transcended the technical and rose to the level of communication art. They combined visual clarity, information density and insight into some fact of fundamental interest. From tomato taste to accelerating human evolution to a goose that flies over the Himalayas, here are our favorite scientific figures of the year. Above: Sperm Trajectories A new method for observing the three-dimensional trajectories of sperm shows their paths in unprecedented detail (above). Hidden in that maelstrom, however, is the tendency of individual sperm to follow one of several basic paths (below). Citation: "High-throughput lens-free 3D tracking of human sperms reveals rare statistics of helical trajectories." By Ting-Wei Su, Liang Xue and Aydogan Ozcan. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 September 2012. Images: Su et al./PNAS (Larger image: Top/Bottom)

Thanks, Mom and Dad Half your genes come from mom. The other half come from dad. It's a basic fact of biology. But what about gene regulation -- all those factors that control the pace and timing of each cell's genetic activity? Researchers with the ENCODE project, an encyclopedic annotation of the human genome, analyzed parental contributions to regulation. Some targets (clusters at the edge of the radial network above) proved to be dominated by mom's genetic components (red) while others were controlled by dad (blue). Sometimes, mom and dad shared. Citation: "Architecture of the human regulatory network derived from ENCODE data." By Mark B. Gerstein, Anshul Kundaje, Manoj Hariharan, Stephen G. Landt, Koon-Kiu Yan, Chao Cheng, Xinmeng Jasmine Mu, Ekta Khurana, Joel Rozowsky, Roger Alexander, Renqiang Min, Pedro Alves, Alexej Abyzov, Nick Addleman, Nitin Bhardwaj, Alan P. Boyle, Philip Cayting, Alexandra Charos, David Z. Chen, Yong Cheng, Declan Clarke, Catharine Eastman, Ghia Euskirchen, Seth Frietze, Yao Fu, Jason Gertz, Fabian Grubert, Arif Harmanci, Preti Jain, Maya Kasowski, Phil Lacroute, Jing Leng, Jin Lian, Hannah Monahan, Henriette O’Geen, Zhengqing Ouyang, E. Christopher Partridge, Dorrelyn Patacsil, Florencia Pauli, Debasish Raha, Lucia Ramirez, Timothy E. Reddy, Brian Reed, Minyi Shi, Teri Slifer, Jing Wang, Linfeng Wu, Xinqiong Yang, Kevin Y. Yip, Gili Zilberman-Schapira, Serafim Batzoglou, Arend Sidow, Peggy J. Farnham, Richard M. Myers, Sherman M. Weissman & Michael Snyder. Nature, Vol. 489 No. 7414, 5 September 2012. Image: Gerstein et al./Nature (Larger image)

Rock, Paper, Scissors: Life! Aside from being a timeless method of settling debates, the rock-paper-scissors game contains dynamics seen in the natural world, in particular between competing organisms. Here rock-paper-scissors algorithms were used in models of ecological evolution, generating after thousands of generations beautiful geometries of species distribution. In the figures above, each species is represented by a color, and each block represents a trial evolutionary run of the algorithms. Citation: "Junctions and spiral patterns in Rock-Paper-Scissors type models." By P. P. Avelino, D. Bazeia, L. Losano, J. Menezes, B. F. Oliveira. arXiv, 28 May 2012. Image: Avelino et al./arXiv (Larger image)

Evolution Reconstructed Though the fossil record preserves physical shapes, ancient colors and patterns are usually lost to deep time. Here researchers have combined what's known about pigmentation and physiological development in existing Conus sea snails to infer what their ancestors probably looked like, computationally resurrecting lost appearances. Citation: "Evolution of patterns on Conus shells." By Zhenqiang Gong, Nichilos J. Matzke, Bard Ermentrout, Dawn Song, Jann E. Vendetti, Montgomery Slatkin, and George Osterd. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 4 January 2012. Image: Gong et al./PNAS (Larger image)

Gardening With Fire Australia's climate alternates between periods of intense rainfall and dryness, a cycle that leaves landscapes vulnerable to massive wildfires. Martu aborigines fight fire with fire, using controlled burns to reduce the shrubs and dry grasses that fuel wildfires. Their burns (mapped above, color-coded by date for a region in western Australia) ultimately create environmental conditions beneficial for both the Martu and the life surrounding them. Citation: "Aboriginal hunting buffers climate-driven fire-size variability in Australia’s spinifex grasslands." By Rebecca Bliege Bird, Brian F. Codding, Peter G. Kauhanen, and Douglas W. Bird. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 109 No. 26, 26 June 2012. Image: Bird et al./PNAS (Larger image)

Life's Core Patterns Between 640 million and 540 million years ago, animal life experienced a massive evolutionary surge of physical complexity. These early forms, which may have emerged through a process of self-organization, provided the essential templates on which life would continue to develop. Citation: "Physico-Genetic Determinants in the Evolution of Development." By Stuart A. Newman. Science, Vol. 338 no. 6104, 12 October 2012. Image: Stuart Newman/Science (Larger image)

All the Birds in the World One of the most ambitious phylogenetic trees every constructed, this chronicle of avian evolution begins in the time of dinosaurs and ends in 9,993 living bird species, conveying the awesome generative process that is evolution. Citation: "The global diversity of birds in space and time." By W. Jetz, G. H. Thomas, J. B. Joy, K. Hartmann & A. O. Mooers. Nature, Vol. 491, No. 7422, 1 November 2012. Image: Jetz et al./Nature (Larger image)

Destruction is Simplification Drought doesn't just kill. It fundamentally alters ecosystems, contracting the possibilities and relationships they contain. At top is the food web of a freshwater stream before drought. Below is the stream's web after drought. Citation: "Drought alters the structure and functioning of complex food webs." By Mark E. Ledger, Lee E. Brown, François K. Edwards, Alexander M. Milner and Guy Woodward. Nature Climate Change, 9 September 2012. Image: Ledger et al./Nature Climate change (Larger image)

The Variation Inside Though it's long been assumed that each cell in a body contains the same basic genomic blueprint, research now suggests that genomes actually vary between cells in the same body. The figure above comes from a study of copy number variation, in which stretches of DNA are repeated multiple times. In all 23 chromosomes (arrayed in radial form) researchers found copy number differences unique to each cell's physical origin (color coding). Brain cells, for example, had quite different genomes from lung cells. Citation: "Extensive genetic variation in somatic human tissues." By Maeve O’Huallachain, Konrad J. Karczewski, Sherman M. Weissmand, Alexander Eckehart Urbana, and Michael P. Snyder. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 109 No. 44, 30 October 2012. Image: O'Huallachain/PNAS (Larger image)

Butterflies Take Wing One of the best long-term ecological datasets comes from amateur naturalists in Massachusetts, who between 1992 and 2010 conducted nearly 20,000 surveys of butterflies. Their data made it possible to detect a profound shift in northeastern butterfly communities. In the map above, Massachusetts is color-coded according to the number of days over 60 degrees Fahrenheit experienced between 1992 and 2010. The graph below tracks population trends for northern (blue) and southern (red) species. In each region, southern butterflies are ascendant, while northern numbers have declined. Citation: "Climate-driven changes in northeastern US butterfly communities." By Greg A. Breed, Sharon Stichter and Elizabeth E. Crone. Nature Climate Change, 19 August 2012. Image: Breed et al./Nature Climate Change (Larger image)

The Essence of Tomato The bland, watery supermarket spheres now synonymous with a modern conception of tomato represent just a tiny fraction of this vegetable's possibilities. Researchers looking to identify the essence of tomato taste performed a molecular analysis of dozens of varieties (listed at right), measuring intensity (blue to red) of taste-associated compounds (listed at bottom). The result is a tapestry of tomato potential. Citation: “The Chemical Interactions Underlying Tomato Flavor Preferences.” By Denise Tieman, Peter Bliss, Lauren M. McIntyre, Adilia Blandon-Ubeda, Dawn Bies, Asli Z. Odabasi, Gustavo R. Rodrıguez, Esther van der Knaap, Mark G. Taylor, Charles Goulet, Melissa H. Mageroy, Derek J. Snyder, Thomas Colquhoun, Howard Moskowitz, David G. Clark, Charles Sims, Linda Bartoshuk, and Harry J. Klee. Current Biology, Vol. 22 No. 11, 25 May 2012. Image: Tieman et al./Current Biology (Larger image)

The Pigeon's Tale Urban success has given pigeons -- specifically the rock pigeon, or Columbia liva -- a grubby reputation, but their domestic forms are large and marvelously varied. Here a genetic analysis of dozens of C. liva breeds reveals their ancestry in detail, with each breed (bottom row) containing genes from multiple lineages (color-coded above). Citation: "Divergence, Convergence, and the Ancestry of Feral Populations in the Domestic Rock Pigeon." By Sydney A. Stringham, Elisabeth E. Mulroy, Jinchuan Xing, David Record, Michael W. Guernsey, Jaclyn T. Aldenhoven, Edward J. Osborne, and Michael D. Shapiro. Current Biology, Vol. 22 No. 4, 19 January 2012. Image: Stringham et al./Current Biology (Larger image)

Greenland Rising As Greenland warms, water from melting glaciers flows to the sea, reducing the weight of ice and allowing underlying bedrock to rise. On the map at left, red represents the number of greater-than-usual melting days experienced in 2010. At right, GPS readings from stations around Greenland's perimeter measure bedrock elevation -- falling in winter, lifting in spring, and on average rising steadily during the last decade. Citation: "Greenland global positioning system- network observes seasonal cycles, sustained trends and a discrete “pulse”

of uplift tied to the 2010 melting day anomaly." By Michael Bevis, John Wahr, Shfaqat A. Khan, Finn Bo Madsen, Abel Brown, Michael Willis, Eric Kendrick, Per Knudsen, Jason E. Box, Tonie van Damf, Dana J. Caccamise I, Bjorn Johns, Thomas Nylen, Robin Abbott, Seth White, Jeremy Miner, Rene Forsber, Hao Zhou, Jian Wan, Terry Wilson, David Bromwic, and Olivier Francis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 109 No. 30, 11 July 2012. Image: Bevis et al./PNAS (Larger image)

Climate Velocity in the United States Over the last century, the continental United States climate has changed rapidly and unevenly. Here researchers take a fine-grained look at shifts in water cycles and climate between 1916 and 2005, tracking the speed and direction of changes in temperatures (top left), the release of water into air by evaporation and plant respiration (top right) and water deficit (bottom left). The latter is a measure of how much water ought to be released, given local weather and vegetation, and how much water is actually available. The central plains are drying fast. Citation: "The climate velocity of the contiguous United States during the 20th century." By Solomon Z. Dobrowski, John Abatzoglou, Alan K. Swanson, Jonathan A. Greenberg, Alison R. Mynsberge, Zachary A. Holden, Michael K. Schwartz. Global Change Biology, 26 October 2012. Image: Dobrowski et al./Global Change Biology (Larger image)

A Single Atom The world's highest-resolution optical microscope captures the shadow of a single yttrium atom (at left, with the fluorescent-lit image at right). Citation: "Absorption imaging of a single atom." By Erik W. Streed, Andreas Jechow, Benjamin G. Norton & David Kielpinski. Nature Communications, 3 July 2012. Image: Streed et al./Nature Communications (Larger image)

Humanity's Recent Evolution It's easy to think that modern life has slowed human evolution, but the opposite is true. Most of humanity's genetic variation has accumulated in the last few thousand years during a period of extraordinary population growth. As a species, we're more evolvable than ever. In the figure above, taken from an in-depth genetic analysis of 6,515 people, the amount of genetic variation collectively present at each location in the human genome is tabulated from before (left) and after (right) the population boom. Citation: “Analysis of 6,515 exomes reveals the recent origin of most human protein-coding variants.” By Wenqing Fu, Timothy D. O’Connor, Goo Jun, Hyun Min Kang, Goncalo Abecasis, Suzanne M. Leal, Stacey Gabriel, David Altshuler, Jay Shendure, Deborah A. Nickerson, Michael J. Bamshad, NHLBI Exome Sequencing Project & Joshua M. Akey. Vol. 491, No. 7426, 29 November 2012. Image: Fu et al./Nature (Larger image)

Early Life's Explosion The sheer enormity of new body plans and life forms that emerged 540 million years ago, during what's known as the Cambrian explosion, is evident in this simple but rich illustration. Contained in a paper on the origin of central nervous systems, it depicts the organisms that existed prior to the Cambrian explosion (left) and those that followed (right). Citation: "Evolution of centralized nervous systems: Two schools of evolutionary thought." By R. Glenn Northcutt. 20 June 2012. Image: R. Glenn Northcutt/PNAS (Larger image)

Africa Changing By the century's end, much of central and southern Africa's environment will be quite different from now. Changes in temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide will favor certain types of vegetation, turning desert to grassland, grassland to savanna and savanna to forest (map and diagram at left). Citation: "Atmospheric CO2 forces abrupt vegetation shifts locally, but not globally." By Steven I. Higgins & Simon Scheiter. Nature, 27 June 2012. Image: Higgins & Scheiter/Nature (Larger image)

Plant Efficiency Though the struggle is invisible to unaided human eyes, neighboring plants engage in intense, slow-motion competition. The figure above comes from a study of how plants -- in this case, Arabidopsis thaliana, a standard lab model of plant physiology -- detect shade, helping them direct growth towards light. The figure spans one month of development, with representative Arabidopsis individuals arrayed above their real-world garden plot. Citation: "Plant neighbor detection through touching leaf tips precedes phytochrome signals." By Mieke de Wita, Wouter Kegge, Jochem B. Evers, Marleen H. Vergeer-van Eijk, Paulien Gankema, Laurentius A. C. J. Voesenek, and Ronald Pierik. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 20 August 2012. Image: de Wita et al./PNAS (Larger image)