Facility: Leveraging feedback from the MorphoBank community to modernize analysis of paleontological data for phylogenetics

MorphoBank（www.morphobank.org）是一个免费的在线资源，全世界的科学家都使用它来收集和分享信息，以重建现存和灭绝物种的进化。MorphoBank的用户可以在真实的时间内协作，记录活物种和化石物种之间解剖特征的关系，这有助于重建进化树。他们还可以为2D和3D图像添加文本和标准化标签，并将整个数据集链接到同行评审的出版物，从而更容易查找、复制和重用过去的工作。MorphoBank有助于我们了解所有生物体如何进化，并为我们对未来进化的预测提供信息。此外，MorphoBank还支持教育和外展工作，包括通过与学校和博物馆建立伙伴关系，寻求扩大科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）的参与。MorphoBank是一个广泛使用的社区工具，支持创建和注释系统发育矩阵的实时协作。该奖项将支持三个关键领域的软件开发，以提高MorphoBank的功能，以响应用户社区提供的反馈。首先，项目团队将MorphoBank的数据管理工具连接到计算资源，用于使用简约法，最大似然法和贝叶斯分析算法构建系统发育树。其次，他们将改进现有的MorphoBank数据组织工具，如形态矩阵编辑器，这是MorphoBank数据管理工具中最高级和最复杂的部分，以加快工作流程，并允许任何其他软件包都不可能进行的新研究活动。第三，他们将通过与ORCID和古生物学数据库的直接连接，展示MorphoBank的古生物学研究。这项工作将使MorphoBank成为地理信息学、古生物学和形态学的可持续、可扩展和具有成本效益的现代在线资源。这些努力将加强基础设施，加快研究，同时使新的科学家的教育。该项目与伯克利加州大学古生物学博物馆合作，将向古生物学本科生介绍科学数据组织。带薪实习生将接受培训，将这些技能应用于地理信息学领域。受资助的团队将通过参加他们的STEM演讲系列，继续在旧金山弗朗西斯科社区学院的梅萨（数学，工程，科学成就）项目中向来自教育弱势背景的学生提供服务。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

MorphoBank (www.morphobank.org) is a freely accessible online resource that scientists all over the world use to collect and share information for reconstructing the evolution of living and extinct species. Users of MorphoBank can collaborate in real time to document relationships in anatomical features among living and fossil species, which facilitates reconstruction of evolutionary trees. They can also add text and standardized labels to 2D and 3D images, and link the entire data set to peer-reviewed publications, making it easier to find, reproduce, and reuse past work. MorphoBank facilitates our understanding of how all organisms evolved and informs our predictions of future evolution. In addition, MorphoBank supports education and outreach efforts, including through partnerships with schools and museums that seek to broaden participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).MorphoBank is a widely-used community tool that supports real-time collaboration for creating and annotating phylogenetic matrices. This award will support software development in three key areas to advance the MorphoBank capabilities in response to feedback provided by the user community. First, the project team will connect MorphoBank’s data management tools to computational resources for building phylogenetic trees using parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian analysis algorithms. Second, they will improve the existing MorphoBank data organization tools, such as the morphological matrix editor, the premium and most complex part of MorphoBank’s data management tools, to speed workflows and permit new research activities not possible in any other software package. Third, they will expose paleobiological research at MorphoBank through direct connections to ORCID and the Paleobiology Database. This work will lead MorphoBank to become a sustainable, scalable, and cost-efficient modern online resource for geoinformatics, paleontology, and morphology. These efforts will enhance infrastructure that accelerates research while enabling education of new scientists. In collaboration with the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, this project will introduce paleobiology undergraduates to scientific data organization. Paid interns will be trained in applying these skills to the domain of geoinformatics. The funded team will continue outreach to students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds in the MESA (Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement) programs at community colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area by participating in their STEM speaker series.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.