The Encyclopedia of Life

"Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth, available everywhere by single access on command." - Edward O. Wilson

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Encyclopedia
• Biology
• Life
• Science
• Taxonomic
• Informatics
• Bioinformatics
• Wilson
• Taxonomy
• Wikipedia
• Web
• 2.0
• EOL

[stereohode]

this site WILL be better for species than wikipedia because it is specially designed for it. and this project is much more comprehensive than wikipedia as well. i think it's an excellent idea!

[eightdollarwater]

why does everyone who praises wikipedia here get shot down?? can't wiki and this EOL both be great?? maybe EOL for the natural world, and wiki for everything else.

[bobbcorr]

@kaimialana Visit the overview tab of any EOL taxon page. On the upper right, you will see classifications you can explore. Note that EOL hosts multiple classifications - as there are multiple opinions on how species are related. If you want to find a taxon page, go to the home page and click on a photograph. Enjoy.

[kaimialana]

@bobbcorr Then please direct me as to how to browse the classification, because when I click on the "pages" link, I am directed to the featured pages. Perhaps I just want to see what's available on a general group, or I don't know the name of a particular type of mollusk or insect. Where can I just browse the taxonomy to see what's available? Or was that feature removed in the update?

[bobbcorr]

@kaimialana And there are the 344,645 articles and 73,996 images from the Missouri Botanical Gardens' TROPICOS database - all plants. Interested in Opisthobranchia (sea slugs and mollusks)? Harmful phytoplankton (marine dinoflagellates and diatoms)? Bryozoa? Crowd-sourced moth photography? They're all on EOL today.

[bobbcorr]

@kaimialana The "featured" pages are there to show people unfamiliar with EOL pages that have a lot of content so they can explore it. There are 172,702 photos of insects in EOL, and 39,519 photos of fungi. It is more than vertebrates. :)

[kaimialana]

@bobbcorr It continues to be about vertebrates. For example, the featured pages. Vertebrates make up little more than 3% of all described species, yet more than half the featured species are from that taxon. The only insect on that list (insects making up more than half of described species diversity on the planet) is one economically important species. Having a place holder doesn't count, especially when there is no good way to browse the hierarchy.

[bobbcorr]

@kaimialana Have you visited EOL lately? It's more than megafauna.

[kaimialana]

As much as I love and respect EO Wilson, EoL is doomed to become a site of pretty megafauna pictures and little else. Vertebrates are ALWAYS well represented on these things. I could spend 2 hours of my time making a useful page for one species of insect, but who would ever see it? Who would ever use it?

[MrCycloBoy]

Awesome...

[Amelia14eva]

@i3kick4ur7ass Thats the same for meee !!! its (Shit) x