Tree of Life

This is an interactive visualization of the recently published Open Tree of Life using d3.js. The entire tree with approximately 2.3 million identified species as leaf nodes is browsable through the application. The width of the branches in the visualization represents the number of species they contain.

The search feature can be used locate taxa in the tree by their scientific (Latin) names such as Canis lupus familiaris, Amanita muscaria or Streptococcaceae.

How it works

The original 80+ megabyte Newick tree file is split into many overlapping subtress stored in JSON format. This operation is done with a C++ program invoked with make jsons. The subtrees are lazily loaded when browsing through the tree.

The program also constructs a prefix tree of the taxon names. This tree, which powers the search feature, is also split into subrees that are loaded on demand.

All the resulting data can be hosted as static files, to create a "no-backend" web application.

Running locally

1. first download a suitable tree archive here

2. unpack and locate the .tre file with human-readable taxon names and rename it data/source.tre

3. run make jsons (this requires make and g++ installed on the system)

4. Run python SimpleHTTPServer and visi http://locahost:8000.

See also COPYRIGHT.md