Collaborative Research: ABI Development: Enabling discovery across disciplines through a synthesis of time-calibrated evolutionary histories

这个项目建立了一个生命树校准到地质时间，称为生命树。一个统一的计算知识库（TimeTree）综合了已发表的研究结果，并向科学家和广大公众提供了生命的基本知识。也就是说，每个人都可以很容易地获得数千项研究中所包含的知识，这些研究报告了物种之间的关系和分歧时间。通过图形可视化和知识整合，TimeTree将使科学家能够对生物和其他现象产生新的见解，包括地球历史和物种进化之间的联系。这种跨学科的比较以前已经导致了科学上的重大发现，其中一个领域的模式（例如，生物学）已经被另一领域的机制所解释（例如，地质学）。时间树现在被广泛应用于各个领域，对于研究生物多样性和保护以及环境变化对现在和未来物种生存的威胁的研究人员来说非常重要。学生和科学家可以通过网络、智能手机和平板电脑免费访问时间树，并在课堂上用作教育工具。任何受过高中教育的人都可以使用TimeTree来找到两个物种之间的分歧时间，并与它们的进化历史保持联系。TimeTree促进了从地质学到医学和基因组学的许多科学领域的基础研究。其独特的分层合成世界的原始数据集成到任何数据库，包括主要的，全球的，生物数据库和网络百科全书。TimeTree产品通过网络界面提供给研究人员，便于社区对精心策划的数据进行深入分析。数据库本身的工作涉及博士后、研究生和本科生培训。有关该项目的更多信息，请访问http://www.timetree.org。

This project builds a tree of life calibrated to geologic time, called a timetree of life. A unified computational knowledge-base (TimeTree) synthesizes the results of published research studies and delivers the timetree of life to scientists and the public at large. That is, everyone will be given easy access to knowledge contained in thousands of individual studies that have reported relationships and divergence times among species. Through graphical visualizations and knowledge integration, TimeTree will enable scientists to generate new insights into biological and other phenomena, including connections between Earth history and the evolution of species. Such cross-disciplinary comparisons have previously led to major discoveries in science, where a pattern in one field (e.g., biology) has been explained by a mechanism in another field (e.g., geology). Timetrees are now widely used in diverse fields and are important for researchers who study biodiversity and conservation, and the threat of environmental change to the survival of species now and in the future.TimeTree is accessible to students and scientists freely through the web, smartphones, and tablets, and is used as an educational tool in the classroom. Anyone with a high school education can use TimeTree to find the time of divergence between two species and be in touch with their evolutionary history. TimeTree facilitates basic research in many areas of science from geology to medicine and genomics. Its unique hierarchical synthesis of the world's timetree data integrates into any database, including the major, global, biological databases and cyber-encyclopedias. TimeTree products are served to researchers through a web interface that facilitates in-depth analyses of well-curated data by the community at large. Work on the database itself involves postdoctoral, graduate student, and undergraduate training. More information about this project can be obtained from http://www.timetree.org.