Dear Friends of EOL,

Where does the time go? As we approach the seventh anniversary of the founding of the Encyclopedia of Life, we're taking the time to look back on our accomplishments and prepare for the big push to our 10 year celebration. Whether you're a researcher, an educator, an explorer, or a software developer you can look forward to hearing much more from us in the coming months about our plans and how you can become an active EOL participant.

In the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy reading about some of our latest work. There are so many creative projects underway that make use of EOL that it's hard to keep track of them all. I guess that's good news!

As always, please stay in touch--we like to hear from you. Enjoy your summer, and thanks for your ongoing support of the Encyclopedia of Life.

All the best,

Bob Corrigan
Director of Operations
EOL Secretariat
National Museum of Natural History
Washington, DC
E.O. Wilson's Life on Earth

Image credit: E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation

E. O. Wilson's Life on Earth is an innovative new iBooks Textbook for high school biology students created by the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. Available for free on the iBooks Store, Life on Earth is accompanied by an iTunes U course called Biology:Life on Earth. The iTunes U course brings together content from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, National Geographic, the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) and other institutions with content emphasizing important themes like citizen science, evolution, climate change, and the protection of biodiversity. EOL content and resource are available in the first section of the course: Unity and Diversity of Life on Earth. Activities include an audio interview with E.O. Wilson, creating virtual collections of species and accessing the biodiversity resources available through EOL's iTunes U collections.



TraitBank is growing, growing, growing!

In January of this year EOL launched TraitBank, a searchable, comprehensive, open digital repository for organism traits, measurements, interactions and other facts for all taxa across the tree of life. TraitBank helps realize a long-standing goal to use EOL as a tool for research and discovery.

We’re delighted to let you know that TraitBank has caused EOL’s database to double in size in just six months, with 7.8 million measurements and associations for 301 measurement types related to nearly 1.5 million taxa (species and higher groupings of life). As we continue to recruit new content partners, transform research papers and spreadsheets, and text-mine EOL and other articles, we expect TraitBank to continue to grow at a rapid pace.

As TraitBank grows, it is coming to the attention of researchers and explorers of many types from all over the world. Learn more about TraitBank here»


Search by Attribute on TraitBank


Thanks to TraitBank on eol.org, now you can search the entire EOL database by category attribute. Examples of possible searches are:

types of nests build by penguins
shapes of diatoms
flower color
factors triggering mating in marine worms

With each search you'll see a summary of results so you can view data at a glance before diving deeper for more details. Try your own search here»

Image Credit: Right Whale, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Public Domain.

EOL Podcast Lesson Plans

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL.org) is partnering with Encyclopedia of Earth (EoE) and Listen Edition to create relevant lesson plans and teaching resources that will support using of EOL's One Species at a Time podcasts in classrooms anywhere in the world.

The first three lesson plans in the collaboration are now available for teachers to use for free with their middle and high school students.

Learn more»
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Masthead photo: (c) by Maryam Laura Moazedi / CC BY