About / Acknowledgements

Build a coherent public home for evolution, ecology, and scientific thinking.

evo-edu.org brings together interactive tools, conceptual guidance, species and bibliography resources, and guided-study support for classrooms, workshops, and self-directed learners. The site is being developed as a coherent educational platform, not just a collection of separate historical projects.

Mission Open resources for evolution, ecology, and scientific thinking across classrooms, workshops, and self-directed study.

Scope Apps, Notebook content, EcoSpecies, literature exploration, and guided study in one frame.

Practice Use evidence, explanation, source judgment, and revision as explicit study goals.

Current phase Aligning legacy and newer components under consistent public navigation, theming, and documentation.

Site History

Earlier foundations

The current evo-edu.org effort grows out of earlier educational and public-understanding work, especially Avida-ED and related teaching materials.

Current reorganization

The site is being reorganized so that historically important implementations can remain available while public-facing pages, study guides, curriculum alignment, provenance, and support materials become clearer and more consistent.

Direction

The longer-term goal is a usable learning platform that connects digital evolution, ecology, biodiversity evidence, literature exploration, and guided study rather than leaving them as disconnected components.

Personnel

Current stewardship

Wesley R. Elsberry, Ph.D., EEB Affiliate, Michigan State University, is the current principal steward of the site, its public framing, and the active remediation and extension work across evo-edu.org.

Expanding credits

This section should expand as contributor credits are normalized across evo-edu.org, EcoSpecies, Didactopus-related guided-study work, and the remediated app families.

Support

Institutional relationship

So far, evo-edu.org is an unofficial project of the TalkOrigins Archive Foundation, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Platform work

The site is currently being developed as a practical working platform: stabilizing hosting, modernizing public documentation, aligning navigation and theming, and extending the educational value of both legacy and newer components.

Acknowledgements

People and scholarship

Robert T. Pennock and related scientific-virtues work that informs the site's emphasis on evidence, revision, and trustworthy inquiry.
Hiroaki Sengoku, whose GA-based TSP solver lineage is explicitly credited in the Route Optimizer implementation history.
Joseph Felsenstein and colleagues for the PopG lineage behind Allele Tracker.
Dave Thomas and PandasThumb.org for the Steiner Tree / Network Builder lineage.

Institutions and projects

Michigan State University and the broader Avida-ED educational effort.
The TalkOrigins Archive Foundation, in whose context evo-edu.org currently exists as an unofficial project.
EcoSpecies and CiteGeist, whose development extends the site's ecology, bibliography, and evidence-oriented study capacity.
The VERITIES initiative as an influence on the site's framing of scientific virtues.

Software and infrastructure already credited in component work

Plotly, used in component interactive tools and already credited in implementation-level materials.
DOI-based scholarly linking and OpenAlex-based enrichment where available in bibliography and literature-support workflows.
Preserved Avida-ED support pages, workshop archives, and Notebook-linked source traditions retained during the evo-edu.org reorganization.

GenAI Tool Use

Models used in development

Development and remediation work on evo-edu.org and connected components has made use of generative AI tools including ChatGPT across multiple OpenAI model generations from 3.5 onward, OpenAI Codex with GPT-5.4-class models, and Qwen 3.5.

How these tools are used

These tools have been used to assist with code generation, refactoring, interface revision, drafting, documentation, and exploratory implementation work. They function as support tools within a human-directed editorial and development process rather than as autonomous authors of the site's scientific claims.

AI Content Disclaimer

Generative AI tools have been used in parts of the development and drafting process for this site. AI-generated material can contain mistakes, omissions, distortions, fabricated citations, misleading summaries, or other defects. Content, code, bibliographic handling, and interpretive material should therefore be treated as subject to human review, correction, and revision. The use of AI assistance does not remove the need for source checking, testing, scientific judgment, or editorial responsibility.