Open Tree of Life

Open Tree of Life aims to construct a comprehensive, dynamic and digitally-available tree of life by synthesizing published phylogenetic trees along with taxonomic data. The project is a collaborative effort between 11 PIs across 10 institutions. Funded by NSF ABI #1759838, NSF AVAToL #1208809. More information and tutorials at opentreeoflife.org

Browse the tree and leave feedback: Click on nodes to move through the tree, and click on nodes or edges to see more information about taxonomies and phylogenies that contain / support that node. If you have feedback about the relationships that you see, use the "Add Comment" button.

Contribute data: You can contribute to the synthetic tree by uploading trees through our curation interface. These can be trees from TreeBASE or trees uploaded from your computer. There will be a delay before uploaded trees appear in the synthetic tree. Up to summer 2015, the release cycle has been months between new versions of the synthetic tree, but this should shorten in the future.

Contact us using one of the methods on the Contact page.

Cite the Open Tree Synthetic Tree (please include current synthesis release): OpenTree et al. "Open Tree of Life Synthetic Tree" https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3937741

Cite the Open Tree Taxonomy (please include current taxonomy version): OpenTree et al. "Open Tree of Life Taxonomy" https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3937750

Cite the Open Tree Synthesis Algorithim: Redelings BD, Holder MT. "A supertree pipeline for summarizing phylogenetic and taxonomic information for millions of species." PeerJ. 2017;5:e3058. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3058

Cite the Open Tree Taxonomy: Rees J, Cranston K (2017) "Automated assembly of a reference taxonomy for phylogenetic data synthesis." Biodiversity Data Journal 5: e12581. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.5.e12581

Cite the Open Tree DataStore: McTavish EJ, Hinchliff CE, Allman JF, Brown JW, Cranston KA, Holder MT, et al. Phylesystem: a git-based data store for community curated phylogenetic estimates. Bioinformatics. 2015;31:2794–800. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btv276

Sustaining the Open Tree of Life, NSF ABI #1759838; ABI #1759846 (2018-2022)

Postdocs & students

Ben Redelings

Luna Luisa Sanchez Reyes

Open Tree of Life, NSF AVAToL #1208809 (2012-2016)

Postdocs & students

Joseph Brown

Ruchi Chaudhary

Lyndon M. Coghill

Jiabin Deng

Bryan Drew

Romina Gazis

Jessica Grant

Cody Hinchliff

Dail Laughinghouse

Emily Jane McTavish

Chris Owen

Ben Redelings