A draft of a new evolutionary “tree of life” via Astrobiology.com.
Astrobiology.com is reporting a newly released first draft of a tree of life for the roughly 2.3 million named species of animals, plants, fungi and microbes – as they described it, “from platypuses to puffballs.” In biology, a tree of life is a way of graphically depicting evolutionary relationships among various species. It’s based on similarities and differences in physical or genetic characteristics. Scientists at 11 institutions collaborated to create this new tree of life, which shows:
… the relationships among living things as they diverged from one another over time, tracing back to the beginning of life on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago.
Tens of thousands of smaller trees have been published over the years for select branches of the tree of life — some containing upwards of 100,000 species — but this is the first time those results have been combined into a single tree that encompasses all of life.
Karen Cranston of Duke University of Duke University leads this project, which is also described in an article appearing September 18, 2015 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Cranston told Astrobiology.com:
This is the first real attempt to connect the dots and put it all together. Think of it as Version 1.0.
These scientists are working toward an end result that can be a digital resource – available free online for anyone to use or edit – much like a Wikipedia for evolutionary trees of this kind, they said.
The current version of the tree — along with the underlying data and source code — is available to browse and download at http://ift.tt/1it33Om.
Read more about the new tree of life at Astrobiology.com
from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1KGKJwb
A draft of a new evolutionary “tree of life” via Astrobiology.com.
Astrobiology.com is reporting a newly released first draft of a tree of life for the roughly 2.3 million named species of animals, plants, fungi and microbes – as they described it, “from platypuses to puffballs.” In biology, a tree of life is a way of graphically depicting evolutionary relationships among various species. It’s based on similarities and differences in physical or genetic characteristics. Scientists at 11 institutions collaborated to create this new tree of life, which shows:
… the relationships among living things as they diverged from one another over time, tracing back to the beginning of life on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago.
Tens of thousands of smaller trees have been published over the years for select branches of the tree of life — some containing upwards of 100,000 species — but this is the first time those results have been combined into a single tree that encompasses all of life.
Karen Cranston of Duke University of Duke University leads this project, which is also described in an article appearing September 18, 2015 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Cranston told Astrobiology.com:
This is the first real attempt to connect the dots and put it all together. Think of it as Version 1.0.
These scientists are working toward an end result that can be a digital resource – available free online for anyone to use or edit – much like a Wikipedia for evolutionary trees of this kind, they said.
The current version of the tree — along with the underlying data and source code — is available to browse and download at http://ift.tt/1it33Om.
Read more about the new tree of life at Astrobiology.com
from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1KGKJwb
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