Tree of Life › About

The Tree of Life describes the interelationships of all species of life on Earth, a field of study known as phylogenetics. The root of the Tree of Life begins with the three recognized domains of cellular life:

1. Archaea
2. Bacteria
3. Eukaryotes

This classification reflects our current understanding of how life evolved and differentiated, and is based on genetic analysis. This model has largely supersceded the previous 5 and 6 kingdom models, which were based more on the  Linnean morphological method for classification of life (known as Linnean Taxonomy). The origin of  of Viruses is still hotly debated, and is only tentatively classified as a fourth domain.

About the Website: Like all Digital Universe websites, the Tree of Life Website aims for the most accurate peer-reviewed scientific information available and the widest possible audience — striving to both inspire and facilitate learning among kids, adults, researchers and everyone in between. In the interest of better achieving these goals, certain aspects of the Tree of Life have been consolidated and simplified — for the most detailed information available, we recommend consulting the Tree of Life Web Project and/or National Center for Biotechnology Information's databases.

While the technical underpinnings of the Tree of Life Website is in place, the content work for the website has just begun: we are now looking for contributors to help us build out the content. The project actually spans three separate websites: Tree of Life Website proper,  Animals Website and Plants Website, with more domain-specific Tree of Life websites on the way. The reason for spreading out the effort across different websites is that the field is huge, with distinct communities and audiences for the different domains. Over time, the Tree of Life project will become fully integrated in the the overall Earth Website project.