The Encyclopedia of Life

A new online encyclopedia wants to give all living things on Earth their own
web sites. Even the mosquitoes and leeches. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

A new online encyclopedia wants to give all living things on Earth their own
web sites. Even the mosquitoes and leeches. Rebecca Williams reports:


The Encyclopedia of Life is like MySpace for bugs, birds and bottom feeders.
There are bios, photos and videos of 30,000 species on the site. But
the scientists who run the site are planning pages for every species on
Earth. All 1.8 million of them.


Jesse Ausubel helps manage the encyclopedia. He wants you to be able to
pull up the site on your phone or Blackberry while you’re on a hike. Like a
field guide to find out what that funny looking bug is.


“But it’s also for scientists looking for large patterns in nature – if you want to study all plants that have purple coloring or all
animals that live at least 60 years.”


Ausubel says in a few months, they’ll launch the interactive version of the
Encyclopedia. Experts will make sure the science is accurate. But if you
want to blog about your favorite spider, there’s room for that too.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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