Morphobank Information

MorphoBank's most important innovation is that it is a web application for conducting phylogenetics or cladistics research on morphology. It enables teams of scientists who use anatomy to study the Tree of Life (phylogeny) to work over the web - in real time - and to do research they could not easily do using desktop programs alone. MorphoBank displays - over the web - dynamic phylogenetic matrices of morphological characters with labeled images demonstrating homology statements, and implements the data editing functions of widely used desktop programs (e.g., Mesquite, Nexus Data Editor) over the web in a password protected environment. It is an environment for virtual collaboration by teams of researchers building phylogenetic matrices with affiliated image data. MorphoBank can also draw on images in existing 2D and 3D digital libraries, and holds many legacy matrices from older studies. If a scientist has images that are not deposited in other digital libraries, MorphoBank uses its database to store images (including films and CT scans) submitted by scientists, and allows contributors to label anatomical structures on the images. MorphoBank records information on the author of the submission, related publications, critical commentary and species names. Development of MorphoBank is supported by the National Science Foundation Division of Environmental Sciences and Division of Environmental Biology. Information on MorphoBank is not to be used for commercial purposes.