What is the tree of life?
The tree of life shows how all life on earth is related. Each leaf represents a different species. The branches show how these many species evolved from common ancestors over billions of years. In our interactive tree of life you can explore the relationships between 2,235,076 species and wonder at 105,372 images on a single zoomable page.
- 2,235,076 species
- 105,372 images
Biodiversity and Conservation...
We want to help everyone appreciate biodiversity and the need to conserve it.
Red leaves on our tree of life show species known to be under threat of extinction.
Green leaves are either okay for now but might be nearly threatened.
Most leaves are grey meaning that it's not known how threatened they are.
What they say...
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Magnificent piece of software, brilliantly intuitive visualisation of the tree of life
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OneZoom is a brilliant, interactive tool for understanding the scope and scale of the tree of life, including highlights for conservation priorities.
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Genius visualisation project mapping the entire tree of life into a single explorable diagram.
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One of the coolest things I've seen on the internet
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I showed OneZoom to my colleagues as - honestly - the most impressive visualization of scientific results I have ever come across.
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The best interactive tree of life ever!
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I often use OneZoom in my class, the students love it.
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In my opinion, it is the best visualisation of evolution that's out there for the lay person.
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Wonderful idea and resource!
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Your tree is the best thing to ever happen to evolutionary education. Keep up the amazing work.
Become a sponsor...
OneZoom is a registered non-profit in the UK, all our products are available for free. 790 people like you have helped us by making donations. Their names have appeared as sponsors on 1407 leaves of our tree of life leaves of our tree of life.
Only one name per leaf so get your favourite while you can, for yourself or as a gift.
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Grandidier's baobab
(Adansonia grandidieri)Sponsored byCameron Wiese — Representative of Cameron WI -
Anna’s hummingbird
(Calypte anna)Sponsored forAnna Kay Jahn — USA -
Sulphur shelf
(Laetiporus sulphureus)Sponsored byKeith Howerton -
Pacific man o' war
(Physalia physalis)Sponsored byLiam Borja -
Erect-crested penguin
(Eudyptes sclateri)Sponsored forTim Robinson — Happy Birthday T from your Bxx -
San pedro cactus
(Echinopsis pachanoi)Sponsored byJon Atkinson -
Josta-beere
(Ribes nigrum)Sponsored forKatharina Marjolaine Passmann — Wiesbaden -
Goldfish
(Carassius auratus)Sponsored byMs. Shoemaker — Sacramento, CA -
Closed bottle gentian
(Gentiana andrewsii)Sponsored forAndrew Evans — of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. -
Secretarybird
(Sagittarius serpentarius)Sponsored bymark mulligan -
Band-tailed pigeon
(Patagioenas fasciata)Sponsored byRon Teeguarden — Ronsblogworld -
Spongilla lacustrisSponsored forJacob Musser — just a humble lab worker
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Garden thyme
(Thymus vulgaris)Sponsored forChristine Maurer — Happy Birthday! -
Cream narcissus
(Narcissus tazetta)Sponsored bydougal matthews — Edzell -
Rhododendron
(Rhododendron mucronulatum)Sponsored forLorna — Happy Mother's Day!! -
Bacteria
(bacterium PB90-2)Sponsored forShao Exist — Amongus -
Globe onion
(Allium cepa)Sponsored forWulf Reichelt — meiner Liebe -
Yerba de la pastora
(Salvia divinorum)Sponsored byLevente Móró -
Sweet orange
(Citrus sinensis)Sponsored forShauna Renee del Villar — Sweetheart -
Rickettsia africae ESF-5Sponsored byKenneth Domke — Berlin, Germany
What we've been up to...
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6 February 2022
OneZoom version 3.6 (nickname: musical_furry_lobster) has been officially released. We now show species occurrence (distribution) maps in the popup tabs when clicking on a species, and have instructions for how to run a bespoke OneZoom version with your own images instead of, or as well as, our own pictures. There are also a few minor changes to the tree, with a more recent arrangement of the first few (archaeal) branches, and the addition of the dodo! -
14 December 2021
Announcing the publication of ‘Dynamic visualisation of million-tip trees: The OneZoom project’ out today in Methods in Ecology and Evolution. This publication accompanies OneZoom version 3.5 'Chocolate chip starfish' and explains a lot of the science behind the OneZoom project.
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16 October 2020
OneZoom version 3.4.1 released with new public APIs providing information on the popularity of species and representative images for groups of species as well as other tools intentended for use by researchers and other science communication projects.
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15 October 2020
A new publication, Dynamic visualisation of million-tip trees: the OneZoom project, is now live on BioRxiv describing a lot of the research that's gone on behind the scenes over the last five years to make OneZoom a reality.