Incorporating wider extinct organisms

[open-tree-tree-explorer[bot]]

There are very few extinct examples on this tree. Is there a reason for this (e.g. lack of genetic information, don't use morphological data?) and do you have plans to significantly increase this? Thanks

================================================ Metadata	Do not edit below this line
Author	Steve
Upvotes	0
URL	https://tree.opentreeoflife.org/opentree/argus/opentree14.7@ott93302
Target node label	cellular organisms
Synthetic tree id	opentree14.7
Synthetic tree node id	ott93302
Source tree id(s)
Open Tree Taxonomy id
Supporting reference	NA

[mtholder]

Because our extinct taxa are not well-placed in our taxonomy, we only include an extinct species in the final tree if it is represented in at least one input phylogenetic tree. This is in contrast to the procedure for extant species. For extant species, we place them based on taxonomy even if they are not found in any of our phylogenetic inputs. So the immediate solution to this issue is to curate more trees with extinct taxa in our study curation tool. But we should also continue to improve our taxonomy so that we do not have to drop extinct taxa.