The Tree of Life

Click for larger image in its own window.

This picture is a visualisation of the entire tree of life. The tree of life (cellular organisms) has three main branches;

  • The bacteria (unicellular organisms that lack a nucleus) which are in focus in this picture and represented by orange nodes.
  • The archaea are probably more closely related to the eukaryotes than they are to the bacteria even though they lack a cell nucleus and represent some of the most extreme forms of life on earth. They are represented by red nodes and near the top and in the background of the picture.
  • The eukarya (all cellular organisms with a cell nucleus) are represented by yellow nodes and are located on the left hand side and in the background of the picture.

.

Tags

More like this

The latest re-post of my BIO101 lecture notes (this one originally from June 05, 2006). I know I will have to rewrite everything about the Three Domain Hypothesis, but you also tell me if I got other stuff wrong or if this can be in some way improved for the classroom use…
So, archaea are apparently the topic of the week. While I wrote here about the pathogenic potential of some species of these organisms, a new essay in Nature and a new review in Science focus more on their evolution (and the evolution of the other two domains of life) than any health application…
evolgen reports on debates in Nature about whether the term "prokaryote" is meaningful. Norman Pace argued that the term is a negative one ("privative" in Aristotle's sense), defined by what they do not have (which is to say, a nuclear membrane surrounding the genetic material). Now Bill Martin and…
Continuing with the Thursday series of the BIO101 lecture notes. Check for errors of fact. Suggest improvements (June 01, 2006): ---------------------------------------- BIO101 - Bora Zivkovic - Lecture 4, Part 1 Adaptation vs. Diversity Biology is concerned with answering two Big Questions: how…

Do you have a larger version of this (larger than your flickr version)? I'd love to make it my desktop pic, just to remind me where I am.

Beautiful!

That's excellent!

We are soooooo outnumbered! Is there an image anywhere that is 3D/graphically rotates 3D? Does it look like a spiral of some kind or more like the representations of the galaxies in the universe?

Chardyspal

By Chardyspal (not verified) on 12 Feb 2007 #permalink

Intrigued I went searching.

http://www.ii.uib.no/~tim/frontPages/treesPage.shtml allows you to see an animation of this and another more detailed projection of Eutheria (Placentals) only. For me the animation is slow as I have wideband rather than real broadband, may be better for others.

It also has a larger image, may be suitable for a desktop pic.

It is humbling to see how little of life is on our branch.

By Chris' Wills (not verified) on 12 Feb 2007 #permalink