If I understood correctly, you can do it like this in ggplot2.

theme(axis.text.x = element_text(margin = margin(t = 10)), # further from x-axis, b would bring it closer
axis.text.y = element_text(margin = margin(r = 10)) # further from y-axis, l would bring it closer)

You are not alone! Mine is probably worse even with this ...

We call this hypotheses the 'Zarathustran hypothesis', following Nietzsche’s idea that the maintenance of life does not merely follow from conservation, but rather from constant renovation, movement, and expansion. 3/3

We hope that our contribution will not only be a useful reference for all researchers wanting to perform a tip-dating analysis on their favorite group of organisms, but also a starting point of discussion to further improve this class of methods and its application to empirical data!

Non-exhaustive list of things you can find in our paper:
- A survey of all fossil tip-dating studies published until 2023
- A flowchart with all the steps to set up a tip-dating analysis
- Detailed discussion of all the elements making up a tip-dating analysis, from molecular alignment to FBD models