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The Open Tree of Life is an online 
phylogenetic
In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...
tree of life
The tree of life is a fundamental archetype in many of the world's mythology, mythological, religion, religious, and philosophy, philosophical traditions. It is closely related to the concept of the sacred tree.Giovino, Mariana (2007). ''The ...
– a collaborative effort, funded by the National Science Foundation
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...
. 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 comprehensivetaxonomy
image:Hierarchical clustering diagram.png, 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy
Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme o ...
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 supplemental award was made to researchers at three institutions.See also
*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 s ...
References
{{reflist Biodiversity databases Biology websites Software using the BSD license 2015 software