Tree of Life Web Project - Wikipedia
The Tree of Life Web Project is a collaborative, comprehensive catalog of the Earth's organisms. It provides detailed information, classifications, and phylogenetic relationships, serving as a valuable resource for understanding evolutionary history and biodiversity across all life forms.
En bref
Ajouté le
18 mars 2026
Matière et domaine
biology · evolution-biodiversity
Niveaux scolaires
9e année (3e)–12e année (Terminale)
Type de page
Article
Introduction
The Tree of Life Web Project (ToL)
- Purpose: An online, collaborative, peer-reviewed database documenting the diversity and phylogeny of life on Earth.
- Structure: Information is organized hierarchically in a branching, cladistic tree format, allowing users to navigate between different taxa.
- History:
- Origins: Conceived in the late 1980s by David Maddison, building upon his work with the phylogenetic software MacClade.
- Launch: The project went live on the World Wide Web in 1995.
- Growth: Between 1996 and 2011, over 300 biologists contributed content.
- Decline and Status:
- Funding: Experienced significant financial issues starting in 2009 due to the University of Arizona.
- Activity: Active development ceased around 2011; the site remained static thereafter.
- Current State: Servers stopped responding in November 2025, though there are plans to restore the content as static pages in the future.
- Key Statistics:
- Dataset Size: Contained 35,960 species at the time of its demise.
- Data Availability: The complete tree structure is available for download as a CSV dataset.
- Quality Control: Content was maintained through a peer-review process involving two to three subject-matter experts per page.
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