Encyclopedia of Life goes live

Written byBob Grant

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Almost one year after the linkurl:Encyclopedia of Life;http://www.eol.org/ announced its plan to construct a comprehensive, online catalog of biodiversity, the website will unveil its first 30,000 species pages tomorrow (Feb. 26). With $50 million from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and other funders, and scientific support from a gaggle of universities and museums, the Encyclopedia of Life began digitizing and organizing scientific information on the planet's living organisms last year. The 30,000 pages that go live tomorrow include plants and animals, and twelve of those pages will be fully functional, including links to linkurl:DNA barcoding;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/53881/ data, ecological information, loads of photos and illustrations, and other features. The Encyclopedia of Life was started at the urging of famed ecologist linkurl:Edward O. Wilson;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/23655/ last year and plans to complete pages for all of Earth's 1.8 million or so described species by 2017. An Encyclopedia of Life spokesperson told __The Scientist__ that the website's creators will use feedback on the batch of pages going live tomorrow to streamline the construction of future pages.

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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