Scientists have created a "tree of life" that shows how 2.3 million species of plants, animals and other organisms are related. It is the first effort of its kind, combining nearly 500 smaller taxonomic trees of subgroups of species.
The researchers who created it have published their results online in an open-source format and asked others to contribute to it. They liken it to a Wikipedia for evolutionary history, according to a study describing the project published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Prior to this effort, much of this taxonomic data wasn't available to the public or easily introduced into such a tree; most of it was stored in paywalled scientific studies, image files, PDFs and other formats that resisted incorporation into a grand whole. The tree will help scientists better understand how disparate species are related, which can have far-reaching implications for biology, potentially leading to the discovery of new drugs and helping researchers uncover the origins of infectious diseases, said study co-author Karen Cranston of Duke University in a statement.
"This is the first real attempt to connect the dots and put it all together," Cranston said. "Think of it as Version 1.0."
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