Browsable online "species tree of life"

NBC News said:

The combined efforts of thousands of scientists worldwide have produced the most complete "tree of life" yet, showing the evolutionary heritage of 2.3 million species from amoebas to aardvarks -- and it's free for everyone to browse online.

Such trees are common in the field of biology, with branches showing how and when one species or class differentiated relative to others over the course of history. But most such trees are limited to a handful of creatures, like dogs or the ancestors of modern humans. This one starts from the very top, where the most fundamental differences in life on earth are reflected, and goes down to the very bottom, where even experts may have trouble telling two species apart.

"This is the first real attempt to connect the dots and put it all together," said Duke University's Karen Cranston, who led the effort, in a news release. "Think of it as Version 1.0."

Despite combining information from over 500 smaller trees, the Open Tree of Life is by no means complete, for several reasons. For one thing, only a fraction of the tens of millions of species estimated to exist are described in online research they could build into the database, making them suitable for inclusion. And even a "complete" tree would soon be made obsolete as researchers debate and revise relationships between organisms.

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King Neptune said:

I looked at it a little, but I think that there is too much information lumped together for it to be especially useful. Pieces of it would be more digestible.

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Helix said:

Oh, cool. You can click on nodes and zoom in that way, although there's a distinct lack of resolution in some major taxa. .

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