Visually stunning tree of all known life unveiled online

OneZoom is a one-stop site for exploring all life on Earth, its evolutionary history, and how much of it is threatened with extinction.

The OneZoom explorer -- available at onezoom.org -- maps the connections between 2.2 million living species, the closest thing yet to a single view of all species known to science. The interactive tree of life allows users to zoom in to any species and explore its relationships with others, in a seamless visualisation on a single web page. The explorer also includes images of over 85,000 species, plus, where known, their vulnerability to extinction.

OneZoom was developed by Imperial College London biodiversity researcher Dr James Rosindell and University of Oxford evolutionary biologist Dr Yan Wong. In a paper published today in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, Drs Wong and Rosindell present the result of over ten years of work, gradually creating what they regard as "the Google Earth of biology."

Dr Wong, from the Big Data Institute at the University of Oxford, said: "By developing new algorithms for visualisation and data processing, and combining them with 'big data' gathered from multiple sources, we've created something beautiful. It allows people to find their favourite living things, be they golden moles or giant sequoias, and see how evolutionary history connects them together to create a giant tree of all life on Earth."

Dr Rosindell, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "We have worked hard to make the tree easy to explore for everyone, and we also hope to send a powerful message: that much of our biodiversity is under threat."

The 'leaves' representing each species on the tree are colour coded depending on their risk of extinction: green for not threatened, red for threatened, and black for recently extinct. However, most of the leaves on the tree are grey, meaning they have not been evaluated, or scientists don't have enough data to know their extinction risk. Even among the species described by science, only a tiny fraction have been studied or have a known risk of extinction.

Dr Wong added: "It's extraordinary how much research there is still to be done. Building the OneZoom tree of life was only possible through sophisticated methods to gather and combine existing data -- it would have been impossible to curate all this by hand."

The OneZoom explorer is configured to work with touchscreens, and the developers have made the software free to download and use by educational organisations such as museums and zoos.

Dr Rosindell commented: "Two million species can feel like a number too big to visualise, and no museum or zoo can hold all of them! But our tool can help represent all Earth's species and allow visitors to connect with their plight. We hope that now this project is complete and available, many venues will be interested in using it to complement their existing displays."

Drs Rosindell and Wong have also set up a OneZoom charity with the aim of using their tree of life to "advance the education of the public in the subjects of evolution, biodiversity and conservation of the variety of life on Earth."

Uniquely, to support this charity, each leaf on the tree is available for sponsorship, allowing anyone to 'adopt' a species and enabling OneZoom to continue their mission. More than 800 leaves have currently been sponsored by individuals and selected organisations, many with personal messages of how they feel connected to the conservation of nature.

The team have also integrated the tree with data from the Wikipedia project to reveal the 'popularity' of every species, based on how often their Wikipedia page is viewed. Dr Wong said: "Perhaps unsurprisingly, humans come out on top, but it has swapped places a few times with the second most popular: the grey wolf -- the 'species' that includes all domestic dogs."

In the plant world, cannabis comes out on top, followed by cabbage, the potato, and the coconut. The most popular ray-finned fishes are sport fishing species, particularly salmon and trout.

Now the tree is complete, the team hope to create bespoke 'tours' and experiences of species connected in imaginative new ways -- such as tours of iridescent animals, medicinal plants, or even species named after celebrities. They have created a special screen capture tool for easy saving and sharing of user-generated tours.

Read more at Science Daily

Christmas Island discovery redraws map of life

The world's animal distribution map will need to be redrawn and textbooks updated, after researchers discovered the existence of 'Australian' species on Christmas Island.

The University of Queensland's Professor Jonathan Aitchison said the finding revises the long-held understanding of the location of one of biology and geography's most significant barriers -- the Wallace line.

"The Wallace line -- named after its discoverer Alfred Russel Wallace -- delineates major biological division separating the species with Asian origins from those with Australasian ones," Professor Aitchison said.

"It runs along the narrow seaways separating Bali from Lombok, and Borneo from Sulawesi.

"To the west are the tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses and orang-utans of Eurasia and to the east, the marsupials and monotremes that are synonymous with Australia."

Working 1000 kilometres west of the conventional trace of Wallace line, on Christmas Island, Professor Aitchison and his colleagues, Dr Jason Ali from the University of Hong Kong and Professor Shai Meiri from the University of Tel Aviv, noted species with Australasian origins.

"Unexpectedly, half of Christmas Island's land mammal and land reptile species -- two rats, two skinks and one gecko -- have a genetic heritage to Australia's side of the divide," Dr Ali said.

"It was a highly surprising discovery.

"The ancestors of these species would have most likely have been washed over on uprooted trees of vegetation mats and transported in by a major oceanic current known as the Indonesian Throughflow.

"The Indonesian Throughflow is part of the global heat conveyor belt, and follows deeper waters that delineate the Wallace line.

"It's caused by the westernmost Pacific Ocean surface topography being slightly higher than its Indian Ocean counterpart.

"That's right -- it's a little mind-bending -- but the 'sea-level' varies slightly in different parts of the world."

Professor Aitchison said the species' journey must have occurred within the last five million years, as this is when Christmas Island emerged to form a new landmass.

"Christmas Island existed as a coral atoll from about 40 to 17 million years ago," Professor Aitchison said.

"But in response to a tectonics phenomenon originally described by Darwin, it subsided beneath the ocean surface and disappeared.

"It re-surfaced only five million years ago thanks to some flexing tectonic plates -- 300 to 350 kilometres to the south of where it is now located -- from then on land plants and animals could begin to establish new populations.

"Christmas Island is a strange and unique place, not just because of its geological history, but also its biological history.

Read more at Science Daily