Four years ago, the Smithsonian Institution, the Field Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Biodiversity Heritage Library joined together to create a comprehensive collection of data about every living thing on Earth.
So far, the consortium’s researchers have collected and vetted information on 40 percent of the planet’s 1.9 million known species. Want observations describing the nocturnal behavior of the flying lemur? How about a map showing the distribution of the dark honey fungus, whose underground filament network spans thousands of acres and might make it the largest organism in the world? They’re in there.
到目前為止，該數據庫的研究人員已經(jīng)收集并審核了地球上190萬(wàn)已知物種的40％的信息。想觀(guān)看飛行狐猴的夜間行為嗎？蜜環(huán)菌，其地下發(fā)光菌絲網(wǎng)跨越數千英畝，可能使其成為世界上最大的生物體，它的菌絲在夜間是如何分布的呢？這些都在那個(gè)數據庫里。
The researchers gather information from hundreds of sources (including such databases as the Barcode of Life and Morphbank), work it into a consistent format, and organize it into individual species pages. Combining disparate data into a single, searchable By looking for lifespan patterns or similarities in resistance (or susceptibility) to disease—database should make it possible to see new connections between different forms of life. and by doing so across a broad range of EOL species pages—biologists will aim to find new species and genes to target in longevity studies, vaccine development and other medical research. At the current pace, EOL will hold data on every known plant, animal, insect and microbe species by 2017.
研究人員從數以百計的數據來(lái)源中（包括Morphbank等生物數據庫中的條碼數據）收集數據，把這些數據組織成同一種格式，編在單個(gè)物種頁(yè)里。放到到一個(gè)個(gè)單獨可搜索的數據庫里，這些數據，使人們有可能發(fā)現不同物種之間的聯(lián)系。它們的壽命模式和對疾病抵抗力的相似性（或敏感性），通過(guò)對這些瀕臨滅絕生物數據廣泛的收集，生物學(xué)家找尋新的物種和基因以進(jìn)行壽命研究，疫苗研制和其他醫療研究。以目前的速度，該數據庫將于2017年前全面收集到每個(gè)已知植物，動(dòng)物，昆蟲(chóng)和微生物物種的數據。
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