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All Species Foundation
The All Species Foundation (stylized as ALL Species Foundation) was an organization aiming to catalog all species on Earth by 2025 through their All Species Inventory initiative. The project was launched in 2000 by Kevin Kelly, Stewart Brand and Ryan Phelan. Along with other similar efforts, the All Species Foundation was promoted as an important step forward in expanding, modernizing and digitizing the field of taxonomy. The Foundation started with a large grant from the Schlinger Foundation but had difficulty finding continued funding. In 2007 the project ceased activity and " andedoff tsmission to the Encyclopedia of Life". The All Species Foundation received some critique for its approach to defining and identifying species. An open letter expressed concern over the species problem, a fundamental issue in taxonomy of what exactly defines a species. The letter argued that failing to acknowledge and account for this fundamental issue could undermine the use of the database for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Species
A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology (biology), morphology, behaviour, or ecological niche. In addition, palaeontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. The most recent rigorous estimate for the total number of species of eukaryotes is between 8 and 8.7 million. About 14% of these had been described by 2011. All species (except viruses) are given a binomial nomenclature, two-part name, a "binomen". The first part of a binomen is the name of a genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name (zoology), specific name or the specific ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catalogue Of Life
The Catalogue of Life (CoL) is an online database that provides an index of known species of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms. It was created in 2001 as a partnership between the global Species 2000 and the American Integrated Taxonomic Information System. The Catalogue is used by research scientists, citizen scientists, educators, and policy makers. The Catalogue is also used by the Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Barcode of Life Data System, '' Encyclopedia of Life'', and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. The Catalogue currently compiles data from 165 peer-reviewed taxonomic databases that are maintained by specialist institutions around the world. the COL Checklist lists 2,067,951 of the world's 2.2m extant species known to taxonomists on the planet at present time. Structure The Catalogue of Life employs a simple data structure to provide information on synonymy, grouping within a taxonomic hierarchy, common names, distribution and ecological e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Research Foundations
Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which study the physical world, and the social sciences, which study individuals and societies. While referred to as the formal sciences, the study of logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science are typically regarded as separate because they rely on deductive reasoning instead of the scientific method as their main methodology. Meanwhile, applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as engineering and medicine. The history of science spans the majority of the historical record, with the earliest identifiable predecessors to modern science dating to the Bronze Age in Ancient Egypt, Egypt and Mesopotamia (). Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped the Gree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Organizations Established In 2001
An organization or organisation ( Commonwealth English; see spelling differences) is an entity—such as a company, or corporation or an institution ( formal organization), or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. Organizations may also operate secretly or illegally in the case of secret societies, criminal organizations, and resistance movements. And in some cases may have obstacles from other organizations (e.g.: MLK's organization). What makes an organization recognized by the government is either filling out incorporation or recognition in the form of either societal pressure (e.g.: Advocacy group), causing concerns (e.g.: Resistance movement) or being considered the spokesperson of a group of people subject to negotiation (e.g.: the Polisario Front being recognized as the sole representative of the Sahrawi people and forming a partially recognized state.) Compare the concept of social groups, which may include non-or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wikispecies
Wikispecies is a wiki-based online project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its aim is to create a comprehensive open content catalogue of all species; the project is directed at scientists, rather than at the general public. Jimmy Wales stated that editors are not required to fax in their Academic degree, degrees, but that submissions will have to pass muster with a technical audience. Wikispecies is available under the GNU Free Documentation License and Creative Commons licenses, CC BY-SA 4.0. Started in September 2004, with biologists around the world invited to contribute, the project had grown to a framework encompassing the Linnaean taxonomy with links to Wikipedia articles on individual species by April 2005. History :species:User:Benedikt, Benedikt Mandl coordinated the efforts of several people who were interested in getting involved with the project and contacted potential supporters in the early summer of 2004. Databases were evaluated and the administrators c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tree Of Life Web Project
The Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) is an Internet project providing information about the diversity and phylogeny of life on Earth. This collaborative peer reviewed project began in 1995, and is written by biologists 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 evolutionary tree of life, organized cladistically. Each page contains information about one particular group 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. 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Tree Of Life
The Open Tree of Life is an online phylogenetic tree of life – a collaborative effort, funded by the National Science Foundation. 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. Approach 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 is called an Open Tree Taxonomy (OTT) and can be browsed on-line. History The project was started in June 2012 with a three-year NSF award to researchers at ten universities. In 2015, a two-year suppl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earth BioGenome Project
The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) is an initiative that aims to sequence and catalog the genomes of all of Earth's currently described eukaryotic species over a period of ten years. The initiative would produce an open DNA database of biological information that provides a platform for scientific research and supports environmental and conservation initiatives. A scientific paper presenting the vision for the project was published in ''PNAS'' in April 2018, and the project officially launched November 1, 2018. The initiative was inspired by Human Genome Project, and emerged during November 2015 meeting between Harris Lewin ( UCD), Gene E. Robinson ( IGB) and W. John Kress (Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History). In February 2017, at major conference on genomics and biodiversity organized by the Smithsonian Institution and BGI in Washington, D.C. was supported project's 10-year plan and organizational structure. Summary The project is projected to cost ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the variability of life, life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and Phylogenetics, phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distributed evenly on Earth. It is greater in the tropics as a result of the warm climate and high primary productivity in the region near the equator. Tropical forest ecosystems cover less than one-fifth of Earth's terrestrial area and contain about 50% of the world's species. There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity for both marine and terrestrial taxa. Since Abiogenesis, life began on Earth, six major mass extinctions and several minor events have led to large and sudden drops in biodiversity. The Phanerozoic aeon (the last 540 million years) marked a rapid growth in biodiversity via the Cambrian explosion. In this period, the majority of Multicellular organism, multicellular Phylum, phyla first appeared. The next 400 mil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all of Earth's water is contained in its global ocean, covering Water distribution on Earth, 70.8% of Earth's crust. The remaining 29.2% of Earth's crust is land, most of which is located in the form of continental landmasses within Earth's land hemisphere. Most of Earth's land is at least somewhat humid and covered by vegetation, while large Ice sheet, sheets of ice at Polar regions of Earth, Earth's polar polar desert, deserts retain more water than Earth's groundwater, lakes, rivers, and Water vapor#In Earth's atmosphere, atmospheric water combined. Earth's crust consists of slowly moving tectonic plates, which interact to produce mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Earth's outer core, Earth has a liquid outer core that generates a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Species Problem
A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology (biology), morphology, behaviour, or ecological niche. In addition, palaeontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. The most recent rigorous estimate for the total number of species of eukaryotes is between 8 and 8.7 million. About 14% of these had been described by 2011. All species (except viruses) are given a binomial nomenclature, two-part name, a "binomen". The first part of a binomen is the name of a genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name (zoology), specific name or the specific ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Letter
An open letter is a Letter (message), letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally. Open letters usually take the form of a letter (message), letter addressed to an individual but are provided to the public through newspapers and other media, such as a letter to the editor or blog. Critical open letters addressed to political leaders are especially common. Two of the most famous and influential open letters are ''J'accuse...!'' by Émile Zola to the president of France, accusing the French government of wrongfully convicting Alfred Dreyfus for alleged espionage; and Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail", including the famous quotation "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere". Context In previous centuries, Letter (message), letter writing was a significant form of communication. Letters were normally kept private between the sender and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
