TaxonTree Help Contents:

Controls & Menus

Home: Closes all open trees and returns you to the root. 
Zoom: Zoom in and out on the tree by using the plus and minus buttons or select the desired level of magnification from the drop down menu.
Search: Enter any search term to see it highlighted in the tree. Also see searching.
HCIL: An Internet link to the Human Computer Interactions Laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park where this product was developed.
File: Select "Save As An Image" to save the current tree configuration as a png image on your hard drive.
View: 
  • Synapomorphies: When checked, TaxonTree displays the defining characteristics of the animal group on the connection between nodes.
  • Show Ranks: When checked, hovering over a node for a few seconds will cause the rank of that node to appear. 
  • Subtree Closing: When checked, as you browse through the tree some branches will automatically close to make room for new information.
Help:
  • Help Contents: Opens this help page in a new Internet browser window.
  • Glossary: Opens the Animal Diversity Web glossary in a new Internet browser window.

Tree Symbols

 

Searching

Searching for a term, opens every tree and highlights every node that fulfills the search criteria.  If there are a lot of results, you may have to zoom in on a node of interest in order to examine it.  One word searches work best.  If you want to search for an exact term, check the "Exact Search" box.  Use the pull down menu to specify which database you want to search:

  • Latin Name searches our own database of about 200,000 scientific names. This is a far from complete catalog of names.

  • Common Name searches our own database of common names. Unfortunately we don't have common names for every animal.

  • Animal Diversity Web is a general search of all the text available at the Animal Diversity Web.  ADW has natural history information on about 2000 animals across the animal kingdom. Pages about species are written by undergraduates. Quality varies because ADW cannot fact check. Pages at higher taxonomic levels are written by professionals.

  • Food Habits searches only in the text in the "Food Habits" sections of the Animal Diversity Web.  Since this is a full-text search, some of the results may represent information other than the diet of an animal.

  • Synapomorphies searches our own database of identifying characteristics of animal groups.  Also see controls & menus.