Encyclopedia of Life website catalogs species, accepts suggestions from public

There is now a website that is attempting to catalog every species on earth. According to CBS's Sunday Morning, 90 per cent of all species on earth have yet to be discovered and named.

The Encyclopedia of Life has a big goal; to identify all information about life on earth and to make that information available on the Internet for free. Encyclopedia of Life has been available since February of 2008. They have a full-time staff of 20 people but accept input from the public. However, unlike Wikipedia, every fact and statement is verified by a team of scientists or experts before it is published. This is a ten-year project; the website has placeholder spaces for 1,000,000 species. The group has a Flickr group in which anyone can post a picture of a species they have encountered and think should be added to the encyclopedia. It will most likely show up on the website once it has been looked at by EOL staff. An EOL press release says it best:

In essence, EOL will be a microscope in reverse, or “macroscope,” helping users to discern large-scale patterns. By aggregating for analysis information on Earth‟s estimated 1.8 million known species, scientists say the EOL could, for example, help map vectors of human disease, reveal mysteries behind longevity, suggest substitute plant pollinators for a swelling list of places where honeybees no longer provide that service, and foster strategies to slow the spread of invasive species.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this website will grow and what it will teach us about the world we live in.