What is PROTEUS?

PROTEUS is the database behind the eFLOWER project. It is primarily a database of morphological traits. PROTEUS is designed as a collaborative tool, whereby users contribute data on their taxa of interest, decide whether these data are private (until publication) or shared with other users, and create and output NEXUS matrices tailored to their own needs. Like the deity from Greek mythology with the same name, PROTEUS can take many shapes: for instance, the same pool of data can take the shape of many matrices.

PROTEUS is designed to track everything, in particular the original reference of any piece of information as well as the user who has entered it. In addition, PROTEUS automatizes a number of character transformations.

The data in PROTEUS are private (only available to members of the project), but curated datasets are publicly released upon publication. For a list of published papers and links to published datasets, see Publications. To find out more about current contents of the database, see Quick stats.

PROTEUS is currently only available for contributors of the eFLOWER project. However, we hope to make this database framework available to a wider community in the future.

PROTEUS was created and is being developed by Hervé Sauquet.

How to cite PROTEUS (recommended current provisional reference):

Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical): Ed Baker, Katherine Bouton Alice Heaton Dimitris Koureas, Laurence Livermore, Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Vince Smith