PhyloTree

OK folks, it's time to see a fantastic web application for showing/understanding relationships between all known organisms in the Tree of Life. Above is a video introduction to PhyloTree, a freshly-created browser for the Tree of Life (or at least a very rough approximation of the Tree of Life). First, you'll get a walk through the features of PhyloTree. Then you see the early explosive discovery of mammal species (most major mammal groups were discovered early on). Then you see the slow and steady discovery of cnidarians (many cnidarians remain to be described). As a tool, PhyloTree can be used to quickly find the first species that was described in a group. The first siphonophore to be described, for example, was Physalia physalis (the Portuguese man o' war).

PhyloTree was created by John Goddard, Tyler Del Sesto and Vivian Hsiao (names in alphabetical order) as the final project for CS132: Creating Modern Web Applications at Brown University. It is based on phylogeny-D3, an earlier project by Casey Dunn. PhyloTree is available here: http://www.brown.edu/Faculty/Dunn_Lab/phylotree

Music is "Butterfly" by Delicate Steve (delicatesteve.com)

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PhyloTree

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