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，全世界的科学家都用它来收集和分享重建现存和灭绝物种进化的信息。MorphoBank的用户可以实时协作，记录活体和化石物种之间的解剖特征关系，从而促进进化树的重建。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，从而更容易找到、复制和重用过去的工作。MorphoBank促进了我们对所有生物如何进化的理解，并为我们预测未来的进化提供了信息。此外，MorphoBank还支持教育和推广工作，包括与寻求扩大科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）参与的学校和博物馆合作。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。该合同将支持三个关键领域的软件开发，以响应用户社区提供的反馈，提高MorphoBank的能力。首先，项目团队将把MorphoBank的数据管理工具与计算资源连接起来，使用简约、最大似然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，如形态学矩阵编辑器，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，并允许在任何其他软件包中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，揭露MorphoBank的古生物学研究。这项工作将使MorphoBank成为一个可持续的、可扩展的、具有成本效益的现代地理信息学、古生物学和形态学在线资源。这些努力将加强加速研究的基础设施，同时使新科学家的教育成为可能。该项目与加州大学伯克利分校古生物博物馆合作，将向古生物学本科生介绍科学数据组织。将培训带薪实习生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STEM系列演讲，继续向旧金山湾区社区大学MESA（数学、工程、科学成就）项目中教育背景较差的学生提供服务。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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.