Scientists have created an open "tree of life" to show the connections of 2.3 million species through evolution.
According to nbcnews.com, the "the tree of life" shows evolutionary heritage from amoebas to aardvarks. The tree was made through the work of thousands of scientists around the world and made it accessible by everyone by the means of internet.
The tree model is often used in biology where branches of the tree "showing how and when one species or class differentiated relative to others over the course of history." However, most trees only show several organisms only. The newly developed tree is known to be the most complete tree of life up to this date.
Karen Cranston of Duke University has led the creation of the tree. She said "This is the first real attempt to connect the dots and put it all together. Think of it as Version 1.0."
The Open Tree of Life is made by combining all the information included from more than 500 smaller trees but it still incomplete. However, its authors are still hopeful that the Open Tree of Life will always be "valuable and relatively up to date."
Douglas Soltis, a co- author from University of Florida said, "Twenty five years ago people said this goal of huge trees was impossible. The Open Tree of Life is an important starting point that other investigators can now refine and improve for decades to come."
In a report by huffingtonpost.com, scientists still have a lot of work to do as the species nowadays are believed to be 8.7 million while a lot are still not discovered. It was also the first one of combined smaller trees to make a "super tree" and made it available and editable.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences had published the Open Tree of Life over the weekend.
