Open Tree of Life
| Available in | English |
|---|---|
| Website | opentreeoflife.org |
| Commercial | no |
| Registration | not required |
| Launched | September 2015 |
| Current status | active |
|
Content license
|
BSD 2-clause (FreeBSD) |
The Open Tree of Life is an on-line phylogenetic tree of life – a collaborative effort, funded by the NSF AVAToL #1208809. The first draft, including 2.3 million species, was released in September 2015. The Interactive graph allows the user to zoom in to taxonomic classifications, phylogenetic trees, and information about a node. Clicking on a species will return its source and reference taxonomy.
The project uses a supertree approach to generate a single phylogenetic tree (served at tree.opentreeoflife.org) from a comprehensive taxonomy and a curated set of published phylogenetic estimates.
The taxonomy is a combination of several large classifications produced by other projects; it is created using a software tool called "smasher". The resulting taxonomy (the Open Tree Taxonomy, OTT) can be browsed at tree.opentreeoflife.org.
The set of phylogenetic estimates that are inputs to the supertree method are curated via a web application. Any user with a GitHub login is permitted to curate a tree. Curation activities include:
The curated data store is available for use by others as git repository. All software produced by the project is available under open source licenses; (see opentreeoflife.github.io for links to the code, data, and documentation).
The project was started in June 2012 with a three-year NSF award to researchers at ten universities. In 2015, a two-year supplemental award was made to researchers at three institutions.
...
Wikipedia