BioInspired! So What? Now What!

From the home page:

"The Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) is a collaborative effort of biologists from around the world. On more than 4000 World Wide Web pages, the project provides information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their evolutionary history (phylogeny), and characteristics.

Each page contains information about a particular group of organisms (e.g., echinoderms, tyrannosaurs, phlox flowers, cephalopods, club fungi, or the salamanderfish of Western Australia). ToL pages are linked one to another hierarchically, in the form of the evolutionary tree of life. Starting with the root of all Life on Earth and moving out along diverging branches to individual species, the structure of the ToL project thus illustrates the genetic connections between all living things."

Goals of the Tree of Life:

"We envisage the Tree of Life being used by people interested in locating information about a particular group of organisms, by biologists seeking identification keys, figures, phylogenetic trees, and other systematic information for a group of organisms, and by educators teaching about organismal diversity. The ToL project was originally designed for biologists. However, given the response of other people to the project, including middle and high school students, we are encouraging authors to include information of interest to non-biologists. In addition, we are preparing to open the project to contributions from a more general audience. For more information, please see the Learning about the ToL pages.

The basic goals of the Tree of Life project are:

• To provide a uniform and linked framework in which to publish electronically information about the evolutionary history and characteristics of all groups of organisms.