Attaching Your Work
- Background Information on Attaching Your Work
- Where should I attach my treehouse and media contributions?
- Help with Scientific Names
Where should I attach my treehouse and media contributions?
treehouse builders toolkit
Figuring out where to attach your treehouse or media contribution is like piecing together a puzzle, or following the clues of a treasure hunt. While researching where to attach your work, you can learn something about the relatives of the organism that your treehouse is about, discover information on its evolutionary history (phylogeny), find out the scientific names of organisms that you have studied, or simply gain a sense of the genetic connections between all living things. You will also probably come across many other creatures that are well worth exploring! And if you get stuck, you can always ask a teacher or for help.
This page will help you decide where to attach you work so that your treehouses can be published on the ToL and your media can be used on your ToL pages.
| Attaching treehouse contributions | Attaching media contributions |
Where should I attach my treehouse contributions?
New treehouse builders before you continue we suggest that you: go over some Background Information on Attaching Your Work to learn why you need to attach your work and find out how a treehouse is attached to a ToL branch page.
Where you should attach your treehouse contribution depends on:
- the group(s) of organisms that you have composed your treehouse about
- the branch and leaf pages we have available for you to attach your work to
| You have: | You attach it to the ToL Branch or Leaf page for: |
| A picture of a tailed frog | The Ascaphus truei (tailed frog) species |
| A story about a Chilean tree mouse | The Irenomys tarsalis (Chilean tree mouse) species |
| A poem about the Tennessee crayfish | The Orconectes incomptus (Tennessee crayfish) species |
You wouldn't actually have to know the scientific names for these species to start off. If you know what you have is about a tailed frog or a Chilean tree mouse or a Tennessee crayfish, you can try several options to see which Tree of Life leaf page your picture or story should be attached to.
To search the ToL for the group of organisms to attach your work to:
- Do a Quick search (google the Tree of Life) for the common name or the scientific name.
- Do an Advanced search (either a group search or text search) for the common name or the scientific name. When you do a group search, if the group has a ToL page there will be a link to that page, and if the group does not yet have a page there will be no link. However whether the group has a ToL page or not, a link to the containing group's page will be provided.
- Check ToL Popular Pages to see if it would make sense for you to attach your work to any of the popularly visited pages for groups of organisms on the Tree of Life (listed with their common and scientific names)
- Browse ToL Sample Pages which provide links to many major groups of organisms (listed with their common and scientific names)
- If you can't find the scientific name by using the options listed above, please see Help with Scientific Names
*Please note that when you are editing your treehouse and you search for a group to attach your treehouse to from within the treehouse data entry form you should use the scientific name of the group(s) of organisms you want to attach your treehouse to.
But what if:
- there is no ToL branch or leaf page for the species in your story?
- you don't know exactly what species the organism in your picture belongs to?
The ToL web site does not yet have a leaf page for every species on the planet, nor a branch page for every group of organisms, so your favorite species or group may not yet be represented. In this case, what you should do is attach your work to the closest existing branch in the ToL project. Many times this will be the genus or the family to which a particular species belongs. In many cases, you will be able to easily see which is the closest existing branch on the ToL by choosing one of the options you have for searching or browsing the ToL as discussed above. However, in some cases you might need extra help in order to find out to which genus or family the species your treehouse or media contribution is about belongs. Please see help with scientific names and especially Using an organism's taxonomic hierarchy* (e.g. species, genus, family, order, class etc.) to help you attach your work.
Examples to help you when:
- you don't know what group the organism in your picture belongs to
- you have a treehouse about several organisms that belong to different groups
| You have: | You attach it to: |
| A story about the Jack-O-Lantern Mushroom, but the Jack-O-Lantern Mushroom species currently does not yet have a page in the Tree of Life project. | The Homobasidiomycetes (mushroom-forming fungi) branch page, which is the closest containing group for the Jack-O-Lantern Mushroom species that is currently represented in the Tree of Life project. |
| Pictures of any species of a scarab beetles. | The group Scarabaeidae, because that's the closest group currently represented in the ToL database.> |
| A picture of a jumping spider, but you don't exactly know which jumping spider. | The Salticidae (jumping spiders) branch. Until you find somebody who can tell you what species it belongs to. |
Selecting a Primary Group to which to attach your treehouse
Some treehouses or media may be relevant to more than one group of organisms. In this case, you can have your work attached to several groups in the tree, but you will need to choose a primary group of organisms. The group you select as the primary group will be be featured as a prominent link in the upper right sidebar of your treehouse. For example if you chose Formicidae (ants) as the primary group there will be a link to Formicidae branch page in the upper right corner of the treehouse page's menu. View a treehouse attached to the formicidae page.
Examples of treehouses where you will need to select a primary group:
| You have: | You attach it to: | Primary Group |
| An essay on how ants communicate with one another, and this essay covers all kinds of ants, not just a single species. | The Formicidae (ants) branch, because Formicidae is the containing group for the other groups of ants. | |
| A song about an elephant and his louse. | The Elephantidae (elephants) page AND the Rhyncophthirina (elephant lice) page (Rhyncophthirina). | The Elephantidae (elephants) group because you decided that your song is more about elephants than about elephant lice. |
Links to the pages of the other, non-primary groups you have attached your work to will be in the "linked pages" menu in the right sidebar of your treehouse page. The branch or leaf pages for all the groups to which you attach your treehouse (primary and non-primary) will feature a link to this treehouse in their treehouses' menu.
Where should I attach my media contribution?
New treehouse builders, we suggest that you review Background Information on Attaching Your Work before you continue.
Generally speaking you will go about attaching your media to the Tree of Life in the exact same way as you attach your treehouses. If you have an image or sound recording of a specimen of a certain species and that species is represented in the ToL database, you should attach it to this species.
Here are some examples:
| You have: | You attach it to: |
| Pictures of any species of a scarab beetles. | The group Scarabaeoidae, because that's the closest group currently represented in the ToL database. |
| A picture of a jumping spider, but you don't exactly know which jumping spider. | The Salticidae (jumping spiders) group until you find somebody who can tell you what species it belongs to. |
| A picture of a Habronattus jumping spider on a Phlox flower | Both the Habronattus group and Phlox group |
| A sound recording of a Rana bedriagae (frog species) | The species Rana bedriagae |
However, attaching media is different than attaching treehouses in two ways:
- There the group of organisms that you want to attach you media to does not have to have an actual branch or leaf page.
- You do not need to select a primary group of organisms to attach your media to.
*Please note that in some cases the best place to attach a media contribution and a treehouse about the same organism may actually be different.
For example:
| You have: | You attach it to: |
| A photograph of a Long-Nosed Bat | The Phyllostomidae (New World Leaf-Nosed Bats) because even though there is no ToL branch page for this group, the group is represented in the ToL database. |
| A treehouse poem of a Long-Nosed Bat | The Noctilionoidea group (the containing group for Phyllostomidae, because there is no ToL branch page yet for Phyllostomidae |