Using the Encyclopedia of Life

EOL Taxon Pages:Utilizing EOL as a resource for

information about life on earth

What is the Encyclopedia of Life?

The Encyclopedia of Life is a collaborative effort among scientist and the general public to bring information together about all 1.9 million named and known species, in a common format, freely available on the internet.

Content on EOL is organized into Taxon Pages, ranging from kingdom all the way down to the species level. This tutorial will help you learn how to navigate EOL taxon pages.

Taxon Pages

Content PartnersEOL serves species information from authoritative content partners, individuals scientists, citizen scientists, students and the general public. Below are some of our content partners:

..and many more

EOL.org

Taxon PagesInformation for each species on EOL is aggregated from hundreds of

content partners into a common template called a Taxon Page. Each tab on the taxon page contains different content.

Overview Tab

Detailed InformationTaxon pages contain detailed information about the taxa is available in the Detail Tab.

Details Tab

MediaImages, video + sounds can be found in the Media Tab.

Media Tab

MapsOccurrence data provided by GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) and other

maps can be found in the Map Tab.

Names + ClassificationsThe EOL collection can be browsed based on a number of different taxonomic hierarchies which are featured in the Overview and Names Tabs of every EOL taxon page. All taxonomic hierarchies featured on EOL are expert-vetted.

CommunityLook in the Community Tab to interact with others interested in the same taxa by viewing or

creating a virtual collection or community.

ResourcesLinks to other resources e.g. Identification resources can be found

in the Resources Tab.

Literature In the Literature Tab you will find references provided by content partners and links to

literature from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Biodiversity Heritage Library LiteratureThe Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize and make freely accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections. Find BHL literature under the Literature Tab on each taxon page.

Searching on EOLYou can search for species by common name or scientific name. You can also search for EOL Collections and Communities. You can filter your search results by content type.

Filter your search by content type

Trusted and Unreviewed ContentEOL serves both trusted and unreviewed content. You can filter your results to show only one type of content.

EOL Content PrioritiesYou may come across a taxon page with no information. This is because we do not have a content provider for this taxa yet. EOL has determined that many of these pages are of high priority and is reaching out to faculty that teach higher level courses, about the opportunity of having undergraduate and graduate students research and synthesize information about species on EOL’s high priority taxa list and then summarize this information in an overview or taxon page suitable for the general public.

Atlas of Living AustraliaBiodiversity Heritage LibraryChinese Academy of SciencesLa Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO)Field Museum of Natural HistoryHarvard UniversityEl Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio)Marine Biological LaboratoryMissouri Botanical GardenNCB Naturalis - the Netherlands Centre for BiodiversityNew Library of AlexandriaSmithsonian InstitutionSouth African National Biodiversity Institution (SANBI)

EOL is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the following institutions:

Support

More Information

Encyclopedia of Life www.eol.org

EOL Learning + Education http://education.eol.org/ Questions?

Email: education(at)eol.org