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Comparison · Infra & APIs
phyloatlas vs survivoR
A side-by-side editorial comparison of phyloatlas and survivoR — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
phyloatlas vs survivoR: at a glance
What is phyloatlas?
An atlas of the tree of life that keeps publishing what it got wrong, and stopped shipping the trees it does not own.
This is a curated deposit of species-level phylogenies — 264 trees across 62 partitions, 247 of them time-calibrated — paired with a species-name dictionary of roughly 638,000 standardized labels and per-tree provenance. It is moving through peer review at Methods in Ecology and Evolution, and the release stream is essentially a public erratum log: eight releases in five weeks, each reconciling the deposit against source papers, the manuscript, and its own metadata. The most recent replaced the turtle canonical with a 274-tip ultrametric chronogram after the previous tree failed time-calibration integrity checks.
What is survivoR?
A Survivor data package that keeps turning a TV show into a relational database
survivoR ships Survivor franchise data as R data frames covering the US, Australian, UK and New Zealand versions. Recent releases track broadcast: US48, US49 and US50 arrived across 2.3.6, 2.3.9 and 2.3.12, alongside AU09, AU12 and Australia vs. The World. The 2.3.12 release also reworked castaway_scores into an explicit three-tier structure - standardised residual scores, probabilistic scores bounded on [0,1], and combined scores - and added advantage_timeline as a long-format view of advantage movement.
phyloatlas vs survivoR: editorial side-by-side
phyloatlas
0.0INFRA · APIS
An atlas of the tree of life that keeps publishing what it got wrong, and stopped shipping the trees it does not own.
◆ Current state
This is a curated deposit of species-level phylogenies — 264 trees across 62 partitions, 247 of them time-calibrated — paired with a species-name dictionary of roughly 638,000 standardized labels and per-tree provenance. It is moving through peer review at Methods in Ecology and Evolution, and the release stream is essentially a public erratum log: eight releases in five weeks, each reconciling the deposit against source papers, the manuscript, and its own metadata. The most recent replaced the turtle canonical with a 274-tip ultrametric chronogram after the previous tree failed time-calibration integrity checks.
◆ Where it's heading
The project's defining decision is that it archives the recipe rather than the corpus. Since 1.0.3 the Zenodo deposit holds metadata, provenance, and standardization code while the tree files live at their original sources, and the same principle was applied again when the TimeTree-of-Life was removed at the TimeTree project's request and reduced to a citation. What makes the correction log unusual is its direction: partitions keep getting reclassified from dated to undated as verification confirms the source papers described chronograms they never deposited. The atlas is being built to be honest about archival uncertainty rather than to maximize coverage.
◆ Prediction
The release cadence is driven by the manuscript review cycle, so expect corrections to continue until MEE acceptance and then slow sharply; the open thread most likely to produce the next one is the remaining recoverable archival uncertainty flagged across non-Condamine dated source trees.
survivoR
0.0INFRA · APIS
A Survivor data package that keeps turning a TV show into a relational database
◆ Current state
survivoR ships Survivor franchise data as R data frames covering the US, Australian, UK and New Zealand versions. Recent releases track broadcast: US48, US49 and US50 arrived across 2.3.6, 2.3.9 and 2.3.12, alongside AU09, AU12 and Australia vs. The World. The 2.3.12 release also reworked castaway_scores into an explicit three-tier structure - standardised residual scores, probabilistic scores bounded on [0,1], and combined scores - and added advantage_timeline as a long-format view of advantage movement.
◆ Where it's heading
The work is less about adding seasons than about making the tables join cleanly. 2.3.1 rebuilt challenge_description and challenge_results around a shared challenge_id, added challenge characteristic flags and result notes, and put logical finalist, winner and jury flags on castaways. Since then the pattern repeats at smaller scale: boot_order as its own table, season_name deprecated everywhere except season_summary, castaways cleaned so people booted twice appear once. Derived analytical columns are being separated from raw records rather than mixed into them.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next release to add the current season's data on the same broadcast-following cadence, with any structural work continuing to split derived scores out of the raw tables.
Alternatives to phyloatlas and survivoR
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either phyloatlas or survivoR.
forestploter
A forest plot package that keeps handing users control of one more graphical detail.
ggInterval
Interval-valued data plotting, spending 2026 making its function names and examples survive CRAN.
rgm
A microbiome network model that got itself un-archived by deleting the dependency that killed it.
contagionchannels
Three releases in ten days, every one of them a CRAN reviewer's correction rather than a code change.
tidyaudit
Pipeline provenance for tidyverse workflows, recording what changed at each step without keeping the data.
See all phyloatlas alternatives → · See all survivoR alternatives →
Recent activity from phyloatlas and survivoR
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agophyloatlasv1.0.8 — turtle chronogram canonical; MEE integrity pass
- 1mo agophyloatlasv1.0.7 — restore species-name dictionary
- 1mo agophyloatlasv1.0.6 — data-integrity corrections + TimeTree de-redistribution
- 2mo agophyloatlasv1.0.5 — consistency corrections
- 2mo agophyloatlasv1.0.4 — data corrections + canonical succession (Supplementary Table S7)
- 2mo agophyloatlasv1.0.3 — title alignment, LICENSE, three-category framework, sensitivity bounds ⚡
- 2mo agosurvivoRUS50 and AU12 land, castaway scores split into three tiers
- 7mo agosurvivoRUS49 data completed and season 50 cast added
- 11mo agosurvivoRSurvivor Australia vs. The World added
- 1y agosurvivoRboot_order table added and castaways deduplicated
- 2y agosurvivoRComplete AU09 data reaches CRAN
- 2y agosurvivoRChallenge tables rebuilt around a shared linking key
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between phyloatlas and survivoR?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. phyloatlas and survivoR are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is phyloatlas better than survivoR?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. phyloatlas and survivoR are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to phyloatlas?
Top phyloatlas alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "phyloatlas alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/phylo-species-atlas for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to survivoR?
Top survivoR alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "survivoR alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/survivor for the full list with editorial commentary on each.