How digital 'tree of life' embodies the potential of open science - CSMonitor.com

"Scientists over the weekend released the first draft of a digital 'tree of life' that visualizes everything we know about the planet’s roughly 2.3 million named species and how they are related to one another. The project, a collaborative effort among scientists from 11 organizations, traces relationships between living things as far back as the dawn of life on Earth 3.5 billion years ago. The result is an online resource that encompasses tens of thousands of smaller evolutionary trees published over the years in a format that anyone can use or edit – an effort that illustrates on a broad scale how open-science principles and digital technology can bring together information to expand understanding of a complex subject ..."