Welcome to the OneZoom tree of life explorer...

An interactive map of the evolutionary links between all living things known to science. Discover your favourites, see which species are under threat, and be amazed by the diversity of life on earth.

Our tree of life explorer is designed to be easily accessible for everyone. We also provide educational tools for teachers, software for scientists and interactive exhibits for museums. This is a free community resource with no advertising.

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 105,413 images on a single zoomable page.

  • 2,235,076 species
  • 105,413 images

Popular places to start exploring...

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.

Snow leopard Silken pincushion False 'ohe Sumatran rhinoceros Geometric tortoise

What they say...

Other endorsements

Become a sponsor...

OneZoom is a registered non-profit in the UK, all our products are available for free. 852 people like you have helped us by making donations. Their names have appeared as sponsors on 1507 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.

What we've been up to...

  • 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.
  • 22 May 2022

    Thank you to On The Edge for funding our latest project: tree tours. We will bring you a collection of guided tours around our tree of life explorer. These tree tours will take you to particularly interesting parts of the tree and give you more information about evolution, biodiversity and conservation as you go. You will be able to sit back and enjoy the tree tour, or hop off and explore freely around any of the tour stops.

  • 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.

  • 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.