What is your favorite species?

The Open Tree of Life wants to know.

The tree of life links all biodiversity through a shared evolutionary history. This project will produce the first online, comprehensive first-draft tree of all 1.8 million named species, accessible to both the public and scientific communities. Assembly of the tree will incorporate previously-published results, with strong collaborations between computational and empirical biologists to develop, test and improve methods of data synthesis. This initial tree of life will not be static; instead, we will develop tools for scientists to update and revise the tree as new data come in. Early release of the tree and tools will motivate data sharing and facilitate ongoing synthesis of knowledge. (from the What IS the Tree of Life page at opentreeoflife.org)

The folks at OToL are asking for your help. In addition to building a comprehensive reference for the tree of life, they will also be building an educational version focused on about 200 exemplars across the tree of life that will be more accessible and friendly to students, educators, and the general public. They're asking for your help in identifying those exemplars.

So if you have a good candidate for an exemplar in mind, head over to OToL and submit your suggestion. It's a great project and it deserves our support.