Open Tree FAQ

Some of these are adapted from the reddit AMA.

Do you plan to include extinct species?

For “version 1.0” of the tree we restricted focus to extant lineages. Getting extinct taxa into the tree is definitely high on the priority list! To accomplish this requires two non-trivial tasks: 1) incorporating paleontological taxonomies into our synthetic taxonomy (we’re working on it), and 2) getting a representative sampling of phylogenetic trees into our treestore, which we hope the community will help provide. (josephwb)

If this is a phylogenetic tree, why are there so many polytomies (n-way branching for n > 2)?

For instances in the synthetic tree where a node has more than 2 descendant lineages (i.e. it displays a ‘polytomy’), this is either because 1) we have no source trees covering that node, so the resolution comes from taxonomy (which is composed mostly of polytomies), or 2) source trees that touch on the node were unable themselves to provide greater resolution. Such polytomies, especially ones that display only taxonomy, are clear targets for further tree sampling. If you know of trees that can resolve a polytomy, please contribute! (josephwb)