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 105,393 images on a single zoomable page.
- 2,235,076 species
- 105,393 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.
Become a sponsor...
OneZoom is a registered non-profit in the UK, all our products are available for free. 831 people like you have helped us by making donations. Their names have appeared as sponsors on 1473 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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Sponsored forSimon Cullen -
Sponsored byDeborah Robicheau -
Sponsored byLibby Hsu — San Francisco, CA -
Sponsored forJohn Green — Avowed nemesis of this plant. -
Sponsored forCarlo Perrone — from his sister -
Sponsored forMaia Wintle — Bishop's Stortford -
Sponsored forDominique Spillett — Bishop's Stortford, UK -
Sponsored byHoward Kaplan — Composer of frog songs -
Sponsored byHoward Kaplan — Composer of frog songs -
Sponsored byDavid Ebbo -
Sponsored forVictoria Wright -
Sponsored forNatalia & Trevor — For the journey ahead -
Sponsored forMandy Eppley — love, Aloe -
Sponsored forRachel Hughes — A friend for the frog -
Sponsored byIvan Conesa Alcolea -
Sponsored byIvan Conesa Alcolea -
Sponsored forAnnika Ahnell -
Sponsored forJan Ahnell -
Sponsored byJoshua Adams — The Apple Lord -
Sponsored byMichael Dondrup — LiceBase
What we've been up to...
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29 September 2022
Donors can now renew their support of sponsored leaves. Sponsorships are only for a four year period, however those who do not renew will remain on our tree of life for the time being. Donors will get an e-mail reminder before their sponsored leaves expire. -
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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15 October 2021
OneZoom version 3.5 'Chocolate chip starfish' released with new and improved colour schemes and styles as well as substantial improvements to the content and interpretation pages throughout the site.
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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.
