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tree of life
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Diagram of the tree of life based on the three-domain system, showing Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota branching into four kingdoms: Plants, Animals, Fungi, and Protista, with illustrations of representative organisms for each group.
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tree of life

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Diagram of the tree of life based on the three-domain system, showing Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota branching into four kingdoms: Plants, Animals, Fungi, and Protista, with illustrations of representative organisms for each group.
The three-domain classification of life-forms The tree of life according to the three-domain system of biological classification, consisting of the prokaryote groups Archaea and Bacteria and the eukaryotes, Eukaryota.

The "tree of life" is a metaphor used in biology to represent the evolutionary connections between all living organisms on Earth. It illustrates that all life shares a common ancestor, which existed approximately 3.5 billion years ago. As this ancestor and its descendants reproduced, life diversified through a process called speciation, creating branches on this evolutionary tree.1

Phylogenetics is the scientific study of these ancestral relationships. It uses genetic and molecular data, along with other evidence, to construct phylogenetic trees (also known as cladograms or dendrograms). These diagrams visually represent hypotheses about how different groups of organisms are related, with more recent common ancestors indicating closer relationships.23

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5 Britannica Sources
  1. phylogenetic tree
  2. taxonomy - Division of organisms into kingdoms
  3. phylogenetics
  4. How Do You Read Phylogenetic Trees?
  5. tree of life

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