Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Tree of life branches out online


 http://phys.org/news/2012-10-tree-life-online.html

The site – called OneZoom – starts with a graphic depicting the tree of life with a trunk, branches, twigs and then leaves representing individual species. But you can use the mouse to zoom in on any point on the tree to explore ever smaller categories of life. And if you want to find where we or any other creature appears on the tree, you just type a name in and click on go. The tool then zooms into the leaf depicting whichever species you typed in, giving its Latin name, as well as conservation and population status. In the process, you can see exactly which other species it is related to. 'OneZoom gives you a natural way to explore large amounts of complex information like the tree of life. It's intuitive because it's similar to the way we explore the real world by moving towards interesting objects to see them in more detail,' says Dr James Rosindell from Imperial College London, who devised the tool together with Dr Luke Harmon from the University of Idaho. Until now, there were only limited ways to visualise the tree of life. The traditional tree is often drawn with a thick trunk denoting the first life on Earth. The trunk then splits into large boughs for different categories of life such plants and animals, then ever-smaller branches for different groups of life such as insects, fish, birds and mammals.

Both the Roy animal kingdom and Biv plant kingdom can appear as branches of a tree as each branch specializes into a new branch. They can also show more cooperative herd animals of Y-Ro groups of nearby branches might remain as part of the same species for interbreeding and are held together by cooperation. For example Ro buffalo might tend to split into different branches of species seen as going up the tree but horizontally these branches near each other continue to mix their genes forming a single species. If they were attacked so much by predators that they had to break up their herds then these different genes might separate again into more separate branches that became different species. For example buffalo of different sizes, speeds, temperaments, colors, etc might stay a single herd by mixing up these gnes and protecting each other against Y predators. If they were overwhelmed by attacks then some might start to split off into separate herds or hide as loners. For example the weaker buffalo might not get protected enough and so they split off into a separate herd that survives better by running faster than the bigger buffalo. Another herd might form with colorings that hide them better in one area while the rest of the herd moves to open Savannah where their cooperation protects them better than camouflage.

However it can also be represented as roots, a Ro herd of buffalo might be one species that formed by different animals that came together to protect each other in the reverse of the previous example of a herd fragmenting. Usually each animal or person has characteristics different from each other, as do their parents down the root structure. These variations can be chaotic, go back far enough and some revolutionary gene mutations will have cause the buffalo to become what they are. This is not the same as evolution which represents incremental changes. Other variations can be random, herd animals sometimes vary in their size and weight so further down the roots they can be deviations from the normal buffalo ancestor. If two then were heavier than the norm then the offspring might be heavier, the next pairing might revert to the mean weight but some might continue randomly to select heavier mates until a species incrementally becomes the new normal of a heavier buffalo. This depends on the actions of predators, the heavier buffalo might have been slower and more vulnerable or their weight might have been an advantage.
The site – called OneZoom – starts with a graphic depicting the tree of life with a trunk, branches, twigs and then leaves representing individual species. But you can use the mouse to zoom in on any point on the tree to explore ever smaller categories of life. And if you want to find where we or any other creature appears on the tree, you just type a name in and click on go. The tool then zooms into the leaf depicting whichever species you typed in, giving its Latin name, as well as conservation and population status. In the process, you can see exactly which other species it is related to. 'OneZoom gives you a natural way to explore large amounts of complex information like the tree of life. It's intuitive because it's similar to the way we explore the real world by moving towards interesting objects to see them in more detail,' says Dr James Rosindell from Imperial College London, who devised the tool together with Dr Luke Harmon from the University of Idaho. Until now, there were only limited ways to visualise the tree of life. The traditional tree is often drawn with a thick trunk denoting the first life on Earth. The trunk then splits into large boughs for different categories of life such plants and animals, then ever-smaller branches for different groups of life such as insects, fish, birds and mammals.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-tree-life-online.html#jCp
The site – called OneZoom – starts with a graphic depicting the tree of life with a trunk, branches, twigs and then leaves representing individual species. But you can use the mouse to zoom in on any point on the tree to explore ever smaller categories of life. And if you want to find where we or any other creature appears on the tree, you just type a name in and click on go. The tool then zooms into the leaf depicting whichever species you typed in, giving its Latin name, as well as conservation and population status. In the process, you can see exactly which other species it is related to. 'OneZoom gives you a natural way to explore large amounts of complex information like the tree of life. It's intuitive because it's similar to the way we explore the real world by moving towards interesting objects to see them in more detail,' says Dr James Rosindell from Imperial College London, who devised the tool together with Dr Luke Harmon from the University of Idaho. Until now, there were only limited ways to visualise the tree of life. The traditional tree is often drawn with a thick trunk denoting the first life on Earth. The trunk then splits into large boughs for different categories of life such plants and animals, then ever-smaller branches for different groups of life such as insects, fish, birds and mammals.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-tree-life-online.html#jCp
The site – called OneZoom – starts with a graphic depicting the tree of life with a trunk, branches, twigs and then leaves representing individual species. But you can use the mouse to zoom in on any point on the tree to explore ever smaller categories of life. And if you want to find where we or any other creature appears on the tree, you just type a name in and click on go. The tool then zooms into the leaf depicting whichever species you typed in, giving its Latin name, as well as conservation and population status. In the process, you can see exactly which other species it is related to. 'OneZoom gives you a natural way to explore large amounts of complex information like the tree of life. It's intuitive because it's similar to the way we explore the real world by moving towards interesting objects to see them in more detail,' says Dr James Rosindell from Imperial College London, who devised the tool together with Dr Luke Harmon from the University of Idaho. Until now, there were only limited ways to visualise the tree of life. The traditional tree is often drawn with a thick trunk denoting the first life on Earth. The trunk then splits into large boughs for different categories of life such plants and animals, then ever-smaller branches for different groups of life such as insects, fish, birds and mammals.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-tree-life-online.html#jCp

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