'Tree of Life' for 2.3 Million Species Released
September 23, 2015| |
A first draft of the "Tree of Life" for roughly 2.3 million named species of animals, plants, fungi, and microbes has been released. The circular family tree is a collaborative effort among 11 institutions that depicts the relationships among living things as they diverged from one another over time, tracing back to the beginning of life on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago.
Smaller trees have been published previously for select branches of life, but this is the first time that those results were combined into a single tree. The researchers compiled thousands of smaller chunks that had already been published online, merging them into a gigantic "supertree" that includes all named species.
The current version of the tree is available for download at The Open Tree of Life website. For more details, read the news releases from Duke University and University of Michigan.
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