Evolutionary tree covering 2.3 million species released

Through cooperating whole heartedly of eleven institutions, a first draft of the "tree of life" for about  2.3 million species of animals, plants, fungi and microbes has been released. It depicts the relationships among living things as they diverged from one another over time, tracing back to the beginning of life on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago.
There are so many smaller trees published over these years, but this is the first time that all of those results are combined into a single tree that covers all of life. It is available online at https://tree.opentreeoflife.org as a digital resource. You can browse, download, use or edit it for free. You can also find it in an article appearing Sept. 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Evolutionary trees are not just for figuring out whether aardvarks are more closely related to moles or manatees, or pinpointing a slime mold's closest cousins, they are also helpful to discover new drugs, increase crop and livestock yields, and trace the origins and spread of infectious diseases and so on.
"As important as showing what we do know about relationships, this first tree of life is also important in revealing what we don't know," said co-author Douglas Soltis of the University of Florida.
The team is also developing software that can enable researchers to log on, update and revise the tree as new data come in for the species remaining to be named or discovered. It is quite important to share data for those works which are already-published or newly-published. Only by sharing can you improve. A few years ago no one was optimistic about the goal of huge trees, but now this Version 1.0. “tree of life” is just online for everyone. It is the starting point.
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