As phylogenetic data becomes increasingly available, along with associated data on species’ genomes, traits, and geographic distributions, the need to ensure data availability and reuse become more and more acute. In this paper, we provide ten “simple rules” that we view as best practices for data sharing in phylogenetic research. These rules will help lead towards a future phylogenetics where data can easily be archived, shared, reused, and repurposed across a wide variety of projects.

We describe our efforts to develop a software package, Arbor, that will enable scientific research in all aspects of comparative biology. This software will enable developmental biologists, geneticists, ecologists, geographers, paleobiologists, educators, and students to analyze diverse types of comparative data at multiple phylogenetic and spatiotemporal scales using an intuitive visual interface. Arbor’s user-defined workflows will be exported and shared so that entire analyses can be quickly replicated with new or updated data. Arbor will also be designed to easily and seamlessly expand to include novel analytical tools as they are developed. Here we describe the core components of Arbor, as well as provide details of one proposed test case to illustrate the software’s key functionality.