MBL develops infrastructure and portal for Encyclopedia of Life

"It is exciting to anticipate the scientific chords we might hear once 1.8 million notes are brought together through this instrument," says Jim Edwards, Executive Director of the EOL.

“Potential EOL users are professional and citizen scientists, teachers, students, media, environmental managers, families and artists. The site will link the public and scientific community in a collaborative way that’s without precedent in scale.”

Starting later this year, the public will be able to contribute text, videos, images, and other information about a species. The best of this information will be incorporated into the authenticated pages.

“There are very many species for which we do not have high quality images or text. Think of these pages as invitations to contribute to EOL,” says Dr. Edwards.

The information management system that the Biodiversity Informatics Group has developed for the EOL draws from two prior efforts at the MBL: uBio, a database of taxonomic names and names-based services and tools developed in 2000 by David Remsen and Patrick Leary of the MBLWHOI Library and by Dr. Patterson; and micro*scope, the first application of uBio outside of the MBLWHOI Library, developed by Dr. Patterson.

“We have been creating the unique system of managing information on organisms that underpins the EOL since 2000,” says Dr. Patterson. “We didn’t invent the term ‘taxonomic intelligence,’ which is the idea that you can emulate the skills and abilities of taxonomists within information systems. But the MBL was the first to develop and apply the informatics tools to do so. And the EOL is this concept writ very large.”

Another group at the MBL will take the EOL’s “macroscopic” powers to look at patterns of aging across organisms, in an effort to identify genes or other factors involved in aging. This group, called Biology of Aging Across the Spectrum of Life, is funded by The Ellison Medical Foundation and is directed by Indra Neil Sarkar.

“The EOL will have a truly transformational impact on biology,” says Dr. Patterson. “Scientists will be able to move towards considerably more global questions, and will have the tools and the data to answer them.”

“The symphony we are creating is amazing,” adds Cathy Norton.

The rapid progress on the EOL to date was congratulated by Harvard’s E.O. Wilson, University Professor Emeritus, who articulated the need for a dynamic modern portrait of biodiversity in a widely read essay in 2003. His letter in 2005 to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation resulted in a $10 million seed grant to start the EOL, soon complemented by a further $2.5 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In March 2007, Wilson was one of the recipients of a coveted TED prize for his work in documenting and understanding the world’s biodiversity. In his acceptance speech, Wilson asked TED attendees to help him develop an encyclopedia of life. Today, Dr. Wilson is seeing the realization of his wish.