New One Species at a Time Podacst: Tulips

When you think of the tools of the modern geneticist, the lowly razor blade probably doesn’t come to mind.  But this low-tech tool is essential to the work of Dutch geneticist (and passionate gardener) Ben Zonneveld.  He users razor blands (and other tools) to unlock the genetic secrets of the flower whose spectacular genetic variation caused “tulip mania” in the 1600s - secrets that continue to make it a star in twenty-first century genetic labs. 

Learn more in the newest One Species at a Time podcast about Tulips.

News: EOL empowers curators to set preferred classification for taxon pages

This morning, we released an exciting new tool on EOL that lets full curators set the preferred classification for a given EOL taxon page.  This new feature was motivated by a number of challenges we faced bringing together data from so any different sources:

1) Sources differ on which name to use for a given organism

2) Some systems of classifying organisms are generally recognized as more complete or more accurate than others, but WHICH system differs depending on where you are in the tree of life

3) Many users want a simpler view on the Overview tab, trusting experts to decide which name and classification makes the most sense.  

We’re committed to making sure that all the information provided to us about organism names and classifications are available on the Names tab of each EOL taxon page — check it out!  In the future we’ll add the “preferred classification” for each page to our API so that other systems can make use of this information.

Those curators who have been itching to control which name shows up on the top of the page, or which classification is the most prominent for a given organism — go for it!  The power is now yours.

You can learn more about how to use this awesome power on our curator help page.

And those of you who just want to be sure that what you see is the best available information about organisms, you can look forward to improvements.  Drop a comment if you think the name you are seeing may not be the best one.

Encyclopedia of Life reaches historic “one million species pages” milestone

Washington, DC - May 9, 2012 - The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) has surged past one million pages of content with the addition of hundreds of thousands of new images and specimen data from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH).  

Read the full release on EOL.org. 

New on EOL: Isopods!

Did you ever think that all isopods look the same? Then check this out! The isopod research community is just getting started putting these online, and there are thousands of species of isopods at sea, on land, and in fresh water. Stay tuned as more of these crustaceans are posted to EOL from all over the world.

EOL and Environmental Education Week

The Encyclopedia of Life is being featured as part of National Geographic’s Schoolyard BioBlitz toolkit for Environmental Education Week, April 15-21, 2012. Participants can use EOL to learn more about biodiversity or try one of our backyard or school yard BioBlitz activities.