Goals of the Tree of Life

http://phylogeny.arizona.edu/tree/home.pages/goals.html (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)

Goals of the Tree of Life

We envisage the Tree of Life being used by those interested in locating information about a particular group of organisms, by biologists seeking identification keys, figures, phylogenetic trees, and other taxonomic information for a group of organisms, and by educators teaching about organismal diversity. It was originally designed for biologists. However, given the response of non-biologists to the project, we are encouraging authors to include information of interest to non-biologists.

Its basic goals are:

to provide a uniform and linked framework in which to publish electronically taxonomic and systematic information (about diversity and phylogeny) of various groups of organisms
to provide (eventually) a life-wide data base and searching system about characteristics of organisms
to provide a means to find taxon-specific information on the Internet, both taxonomic and otherwise
to aid education about and appreciation of biological diversity