Oslo: An online encyclopaedia aiming to describe every type of animal and plant on the planet has reached 170,000 entries and is helping research into ageing, climate change and even the spread of insect pests.
The "Encyclopaedia of Life" (www.eol.org), a project likely to cost USD 100 million launched in 2007, says it wants to describe all the 1.8 million known species from apples to zebras within a decade.
"We`re picking up speed," James Edwards, EOL Executive Director based at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, said on Sunday of the 170,000 entries with content in a common format vetted by experts. A year ago, it had 30,000 entries.
He said everyone from scientists to schoolchildren could use the EOL as a "field guide" or contributes a photograph or an observation of an animal in an area where it was not found before, in some cases a sign of a changing climate.
The Encyclopaedia was aiding scientists who look at human ageing, for instance, by examining the widely differing lifespan of related species.
A Latin American bat, Tadarida brasiliensis, lives far longer than mice relatives of a similar size, perhaps because its body has a mechanism that limits damage to protein in its cells. And some butterflies that feed on fruit live longer than related species.
"It`s working really nicely, the community of scientists working on ageing have adopted the EOL," Edwards told media.
And the Encyclopaedia was seeking to help combat pests such as moth from the Balkans that has spread fast across Europe in the past two decades. It attacks the leaves of horse chestnut trees and makes them brown by mid-summer.
Bureau Report
