BBC Russian
Encyclopedia
of Life. We are sharing with this project all content that is compatible
with EOL
licensing policies.
17 January 2008
We've added a brief user survey to our media data windows (the windows
that open when you click on an image, thumbnail, sound or movie icon).
The information gathered from these surveys will tell us what kinds
of people are using our images, movies, sounds, etc., what they are
using them for, and what we could do to make our media collection
more useful to them.
21 December 2007
A special issue of the journal Zootaxa, Linnaeus
Tercentenary: Progress in Invertebrate Taxonomy, features
an article about the Tree of Life Web project:
Maddison, D. R., K.-S. Schulz, and W. P. Maddison.
2007. The Tree of Life Web Project. Pages 19-40 in: Zhang,
Z.-Q. & Shear, W.A., eds. Linnaeus Tercentenary: Progress
in Invertebrate Taxonomy. Zootaxa 1668:1�766. Open Access: Abstract (PDF;
20KB) | Full
article (PDF; 830KB)
22 August 2007
The Tree of Life and the Encyclopedia of
Life have agreed to closely
coordinate future activities, sharing content, and software tools.
For more information, see Tree
of Life Web Project/Encyclopedia of Life Collaboration.
7 March 2007
We've added new web services that let developers download the ToL
tree structure. You can either download the entire tree or just a
particular branch. For more information, see Tree
of Life Web Services: Downloading the ToL Tree Structure.
2 March 2007
The Beetle Tree of Life (BTOL) and Tree of Life Web Project seek
a web, database, and Java application developer. The position can also
be filled in the context of a postdoctoral research project in biodiversity
informatics. This position is now filled.
16 February 2007
Flickr users can now use our Flickr
Photo Importer to copy their
photos to the Tree of Life. You need to be logged in as a ToL
contributor to use this tool. Don't forget to attach
each image to a group in the tree, so your images will show up in the image collections
of relevant groups.
8 January 2007
Tree of Life services have been affected by the recent University
of Arizona Computer System Security Incident. The ToL servers were
not affected directly, and all project data are secure. However, due
to campus-wide measures to investigate and contain the attack we've been
having sporadic email, general internet outages, and limited access to
our databases. We've been working on getting all services back online,
and hopefully things will return to normal soon.
19 June 2006
We have added new image galleries that let you browse through images
for different groups of organisms. For example, the Arthropoda
gallery will show
you all of our images of arthropods, the Insecta
gallery will
show you all of our images of insects, and the Coleoptera
gallery will show you all of our images of beetles.
Look for links to the galleries in the collections menu
in the right sidebar of branch and leaf pages.
18 May 2006
The Tree of Life Web Project is working with other people
and organizations to initiate a collaborative digital library of
the Sonoran Desert. The first planning meeting for this initiative
was held at the University of Arizona Library on 18 May 2006. About
60 scientists, environmentalists, educators, librarians, and technologists
were in attendance. The meeting featured presentations by the ToL,
the University of Arizona Natural History Museum, the Arizona-Sonora
Desert Museum, and the Rincon Institute as well as small group discussions
that gave attendees a chance to network with potential collaborators.
For more information see Sonoran
Desert Knowledge Exchange.
25 April 2006
The top navigation bar now features menus that provide easier access
to the main pages within the Tree of Life documentation. For more
information about the navigation elements of Tree of Life pages see Navigating
the Tree of Life. Also, there is now a link in the right sidebar
under People, where you can find information about Tree
of Life contributors working on a given branch and about other people
who are interested in the group.
9 March 2006
Each revision of a Tree of Life branch or leaf page is now archived,
and users can access previous versions through a link at the bottom
of the current version. Pages also feature instructions
on how each version can be cited.
13 October 2005
Release of version 2.0 of the ToL data entry tools for scientific
contributors. Read more about it here: Tools
for Scientific Contributors: What's New?
2 September 2005
New batch uploading tools for media files. Media contributors can
now upload batches of images in a zipped folder, accompanied by an
XML file containing the image data. Instructions are available on
the Batch
Uploading Media Files page (log-in required).
9 May 2005
We have expanded our tools for media contributors to include forms
for uploading and annotating movies, sounds, animations, and documents
(pdf files, ebooks, etc.) For more information see Contributing
Images and Other Media to the Tree of Life.
26 April 2005
We have revised our tools for image contributors. There's now a new
Edit Image Data form (see
a preview here) featuring a new layout, a creative commons licensing
option, and fields for additional, optional metadata. Images are now
automatically scaled for use on ToL pages, so image contributors are
encouraged to upload relatively large master images that can be used
in a variety of different contexts. More information is available
on the Contributing
Images and Other Media to the Tree of Life page.
15 April 2005
The tree of life picture on our home page has raised a lot of questions
among our visitors. Therefore, we've added the About
the ToL Navigation Picture page, which provides some guidance
for the interpretation of this image.
4 April 2005
Release of TreeGrow 1.1 and associated online
data entry tools for scientific contributors. For more information
about changes and new features, have a look at Tools
for Scientific Contributors: What's New?
9 December 2004
ToL visitors can now download the entire structure of the phylogenetic
tree that is used as the backbone for the ToL web site. These data
are made available as a static XML file, which is updated every Sunday
night to reflect the current structure. For more information visit
the Downloading the ToL
Tree Structure page.
3 November 2004
The ToL project has completed the migration of pages to the new site
design. Our pages now feature an updated look and a new navigation
system. We expect to do some more fine-tuning over the next few days.
Please let
know if you find anything amiss. Thanks!
18 October 2004
First generation of tools for
treehouse builders released. Treehouses
are ToL pages designed for children and the young at heart. While
the project's scientific content (branch pages, leaf pages, articles,
and notes) is authored by professional scientists, we are now opening
up participation in the ToL treehouse area to anybody with an interest
in writing about organisms. Go to the Learning
with the Tree of Life pages for more information.
6 October 2004
As part of an ongoing site redesign, the ToL project gets a new ToL
Home Page.
8 September 2004
Release of the first ToL image
search tools. These tools let visitors search for ToL images according
to a variety of different criteria.
6 August 2004
First generation of ToL online
image contribution tools released. With this image contribution
system, nature photographers and illustrators can now upload their
images to the ToL database. ToL scientific and treehouse contributors
will then be able to use these images on their ToL pages.
12 April 2004
TreeGrow 1.0 released to ToL
Scientific Contributors.
23 February 2004
The first version of TreeGrow, the new ToL
database client, is released to a select group of beta testers. TreeGrow
allows ToL contributors to enter their data directly into the ToL
database and to preview their contributions on the ToL site before
submitting them for publication. For more information see the ToL
Scientific Contributors Documentation.
16 February 2004
Lisa Schwartz has joined the ToL Home team
in the position of editor/coordinator of learning materials. She will
be leading efforts for the ToL NSDL
project.
12 January 2004
The ToL database backend has been significantly revised to accommodate
more advanced handling of data about images, contributors, and pages
attached to branches and leaves.
For a list of past ToL events, please refer to the ToL
History page.
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