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. 2013 Sep;11(9):e1001636.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001636. Epub 2013 Sep 3.

Lost branches on the tree of life

Bryan T Drew  1 , Romina Gazis, Patricia Cabezas, Kristen S Swithers, Jiabin Deng, Roseana Rodriguez, Laura A Katz, Keith A Crandall, David S Hibbett, Douglas E Soltis
Affiliations

Lost branches on the tree of life

Bryan T Drew et al. PLoS Biol. 2013 Sep.

Abstract

Failure to archive published data can impede reproducibility and inhibit downstream synthesis. Alarmingly, we estimate that ∼70% of existing DNA sequence alignments/phylogenetic trees, representing much of the underpinning of modern phylogenetic analysis, are no longer accessible. The evolutionary biology community needs to adopt policies ensuring that data are publicly archived upon publication.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Overview of total number of publications surveyed from animal, fungus, seed plant, microbial eukaryote, archaea, and bacteria literature (indicated in red), and the number of those publications that archived their trees and alignments in either Dryad or TreeBASE (indicated in green).
Figure 2
Figure 2. Graphs showing results of publication surveys from four disparate domains of life: (1) animals; (2) fungi; (3) spermatophytes; and (4) microbial eukaryotes, archaea, and bacteria.
Red lines indicate total number of publications surveyed and green lines indicate the number of those publications that made their data accessible in either Dryad or TreeBASE.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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