Historically, scientists conducting research on phylogenetic systematics have worked individually or in small groups employing traditional single-user software applications such as MacClade,[1] Mesquite [2] and Nexus Data Editor.

[3] As the hypotheses under study have grown more complex, large research teams have assembled to tackle the problem of discovering the Tree of Life for the estimated 4-100 million living species(Wilson 2003, pp.

Because the phenotype is fundamentally visual, and as phenotype-based phylogenetic studies have continued to increase in size,[4] it becomes important that observations be backed up by labeled images.

Traditional desktop software applications currently in wide use do not provide robust support for team-based research or for image manipulation and storage.

Changes made by one participant cannot automatically propagate to others, preventing collaborators from seeing each other's data edits until they are manually (and due to the effort involved, often only periodically) merged into a single "true" dataset.

In all but the smallest and most disciplined of teams, file version control and the reconciliation of changes made on multiple copies of the data emerge quickly as significant drags on productivity.

In 2001 the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored a workshop,[5] at the American Museum of Natural History in New York to develop the outlines of a web-based system for a collaborative, media-rich research tool for morphological phylogenetics.

The software has been used to assemble phylogenetic research on such groups as mammals,[9] from bats[10] to whales,[11][12] bivalve molluscs,[13] arachnids,[14] fossil plants[15] and living and extinct amniotes.