The Tree of Life Web Project is an

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

project providing information about the

diversity Diversity, diversify, or diverse may refer to: Business *Diversity (business), the inclusion of people of different identities (ethnicity, gender, age) in the workforce *Diversity marketing, marketing communication targeting diverse customers * ...

and

phylogeny A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological spec ...

life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

. This collaborative

peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

ed project began in 1995, and is written by

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...

s from around the world. The site has not been updated since 2011, however the pages are still accessible. The pages are linked hierarchically, in the form of the branching

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

ary tree of life, organized

cladistically Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived char ...

. Each page contains information about one particular

group A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic ide ...

of organisms and is organized according to a branched tree-like form, thus showing hypothetical relationships between different groups of organisms. In 2009 the project ran into funding problems from the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

. Pages and Treehouses submitted took a considerably longer time to be approved as they were being reviewed by a small group of volunteers, and apparently, around 2011, all activities ended.

History

The idea of this project started in the late 1980s. David Maddison was working on a computer program MacClade during his PhD research. This is an application that give insight into species' phylogenetic trees. He wanted to extend this program with a feature that allowed the user to browse through phylogenetic trees and zoom into other lower or higher taxa. Hence, this association was not unique in a stand-alone application. The researchers came up with the idea to export the application into the World Wide Web and this was realized in 1995. From 1996 to 2011, over 300 biologists from around the globe added taxa web pages into the phylogeny browser.

Quality

To ensure the quality of ToL project, the board made use of

peer-review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

. The pages that were reviewed were sent to two or three researchers that specialized in the particular subject. It is possible to visit the personal page of the author. If this is not accessible then the institution is always at the footnote. The entire tree structure that contained 35,960 species until the website's demise, is available for download as a csv dataset.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.tolweb.org/ Biology websites Phylogenetics

History

Quality

See also

References

External links