Searching and Navigating the Compendium

The Compendium species data can be displayed in a tree format, and a list format. The tree of life and it's subtrees are displayed as tables, whose columns are successive taxonomic ranks (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, etc.). The list format lists taxa of a selected rank. A taxon list is thus a compact view of a single column of the tree of life table.

Each table page represents a taxon node in the tree of life. A page includes the list of taxa from the root of the full tree down to the given taxon, plus a subtree table listing lower-ranking taxa. For example, the page for class Ascidiacea has the list: Superkingdom: Eukaryota, Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, followed by the table containing the classification of all contributed species that belong to class Ascidiacea.

Following the species column, are columns that list the Authorities, References and Contributors of the species.

The compendium classification data is incomplete, and taxonomic columns that have no data are not displayed.

All taxon names are links, and clicking will open the taxon table page for that name. In this manner, the user can freely move around in the tree of life. The Table view menu (left sidebar) lists the phyla of individual checklists.

Words in blue are links, and hovering the mouse over most links displays a few words about it's purpose.

Other pages that flow from the taxon tables and lists:

• Contributors
• Publications and references
• Species contributed by a contributor
• Publications and references by a contributor
• Species referenced from a reference

Taxon lists can be filtered by contributors, by clicking on a contributor name above the list. This presents the taxa of the given rank, contributed by the selected contributor. Reference lists can be similarly filtered by checklist (contributed Phylum/Class).

Most table columns, including taxon columns, can be sorted by clicking on the column header. Clicking again sorts in the reverse order. For tables that are multiple pages long, sorting can cause a column to disappear when it does not contain data in the current page. The sorted column will reappear on a page that does have data for the column.

Words or phrases (excepting those in links) can be searched for in the Compendium site, by entering the text in the search box in the header of each page. A phrase enclosed in double quotes will discover only the complete phrase. A phrase without double quotes will discover all instances of each word in the phrase.

Login/Register and Logout of the Compendium are done from the Home page. Initial registration provides a one-time access via a confirmation email to the user, allowing the user to set a password. Logged-in users can add comments, and edit their own previous comments.