Friday, June 27, 2008

Tree of Life

Apparently there is a movie coming out called "The Tree of Life". It shares the same name as the web phylogeny project, "The Tree of Life". The site is one of my favorites, a very well done catalog of all of life's tribes.

The Tree of Life Web Project is a collection of information about biodiversity compiled collaboratively by hundreds of expert and amateur contributors. Its goal is to contain a page with pictures, text, and other information for every species and for each group of organisms, living or extinct. Connections between Tree of Life web pages follow phylogenetic branching patterns between groups of organisms, so visitors can browse the hierarchy of life and learn about phylogeny and evolution as well as the characteristics of individual groups.

Jonathan Eisen of The Tree of Life blog points out that the term "tree of life" is now endangered as a search term because google will put the most linked to sites first. He calls on all biologists to link to the Tree of Life page, and help keep "tree of life" reserved for evilutionary biology.

Tree of Life at wikipedia.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for helping. Got to keep spreading the word ...

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  2. Once more, microbes get dissed! The image of the tree of life is as old as Haeckel and totally wrong as it makes the "macrobial" world look huge, when in fact it's the microbial world that dominates. It reminds me of a cartoon by Saul Steinberg showing the map of the USA seen from a New Yorker's point of view. The Hudson river is somewhere 3/4 of the way to California!

    Elio

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