Ptree is an interactive tree of life explorer connecting scientific classifications with the biology of living and extinct organisms. Explore how organisms are related, where they live and which traits they share. Compare species or entire groups, follow ecological relationships and reveal patterns across whole branches. The scientific evidence remains within reach behind the colors and measurements.
Explore the tree of life
- 11 trees
- Browse GBIF, Catalogue of Life, ITIS, Open Tree of Life, EOL, NCBI, GTDB, ICTV, SILVA, World Flora Online and the Paleobiology Database. They cover familiar taxonomy, evolutionary descent, genomes, sequences, plants, viruses and fossils.
- Switch trees in place
- Move between scientific trees without searching again. Ptree finds the same organism in the new tree, or the nearest connected ancestor when an exact counterpart is absent.
- Compare side by side
- Keep species or whole groups together across all properties, even from different scientific trees. Each column includes its photo and map where available. Comparisons stay while you explore; Color offers a choice between colored properties and plain text.
- Find shared ancestry
- Compare shows where the organisms meet in the current tree. It also offers a link to their common ancestor in an evolutionary tree where they can all be found.
- 41 properties
- Color life by habitat, climate, depth, temperature, pH, nutrition, movement, reproduction, longevity, body form, senses, conservation, plant biology and more. Change the question while keeping the organisms in place.
- See the range within a group
- Species records become distributions as you move up the tree. Medians, quartiles and whiskers show both typical values and variation. Growth conditions distinguish the range an organism tolerates from the conditions it prefers.
- See the mix of traits
- A group's color segments show the proportions of its represented descendants: how many hunt, graze or filter food, for example. Mixed feeding strategies and other combinations remain visible within individual organisms too.
- Find a trait across branches
- Highlight a feeding strategy, habitat or other category across the visible tree. The matching segments stand out together, revealing scattered relatives and small exceptions inside otherwise similar groups.
- Inspect the evidence
- References retain the original terms, records and sources behind a property. Inspect what a measurement describes, whether it was estimated, and whether evidence applies directly or comes from a broader group.
- Know how much is known
- Coverage counts show how many descendants contribute to a group's summary. Sparse evidence washes out the colors; missing evidence leaves gray. A low measurement still has its own color.
- Three views
- Tree folds older depth aside to make room for several open paths. Icicle packs a lineage into a fixed height with horizontally reachable generations. Cladogram fits more generations across the screen by spreading vertically. Switching views keeps your place.
- Bring fossils into the picture
- Include or hide deep-time fossils in any view. Both the branches and their property summaries change, revealing how extinct relatives alter the picture. Recently extinct species remain visible in either setting.
- Map species and whole groups
- See an organism's geographic range alongside its place in the tree. A group's map combines its mapped species, revealing where more of their ranges overlap. Compare keeps these maps beside the organisms' traits.
- Put a face to a name
- Photos and silhouettes connect unfamiliar names with recognizable forms. Images follow your exploration and appear in comparisons, with photographer or artist credits and the license for each image.
- Follow ecological connections
- Explore predators, prey, hosts, parasites, pollinators and other partners recorded by GloBI. Linked organisms lead directly to their branches, turning a meal or a partnership into another route through the tree.
- Explore through Wikipedia
- Highlighted organism links in the built-in articles lead into scientific trees. Amber links offer a route through another tree when needed. Wikipedia and Interactions can follow the tree or stay independent through Sync Tree.
- Find and recognize names
- Search by common name, scientific name, synonym or lineage. Results show the name you matched and where it belongs. Switch the tree's labels between scientific and available common names while keeping the same organisms in place.
- Preview without losing your place
- Point to a branch or focus it with the keyboard to preview its properties, photo and map. Move away and the selected organism returns, ready for the next comparison.
- Shareable URLs
- The address preserves your tree, property, location, view, fossil setting and open branches. It also restores the active article, interaction subject or Compare lineup. Share a link that opens the same exploration for someone else.
- Navigate with the keyboard
- Move among relatives and generations with the arrow keys, expand branches and return to ancestors. Keyboard focus previews the same properties as pointing at a branch.
- Make room for your exploration
- Adjust the space given to the tree and its details, or give the tree the full width. Light and dark appearance follow your system until you choose an override.
- Color-blind palettes
- Kingdom colors are chosen to stay distinct under common forms of color blindness. Selection uses borders and emphasis, keeping the underlying data colors visible.
Questions to explore
- Can you find mammals without knowing the names?
- Follow bands of color through unfamiliar branches. Walking and live birth lead toward mammals; a new tree and a flying stripe carry the search onward to bats.
- What is a fruit-eating bird doing out at night?
- A stripe of color picks it out among thousands of birds in seconds. Its feeding links and habitat raise a second puzzle: how does a bird that nests in dark caves help a forest grow?
- How can a clam turn poison into food?
- Among filter-feeding relatives, one branch has a different food supply. Its source terms and article show what lives inside its gills, and why the seagrass above it benefits too.
- Can a crab leave the sea without leaving the ground?
- A thin land stripe separates one family from its marine relatives. Change the property to see what the journey ashore preserved, and why a giant crab evolved an insect-like sense of smell.
- What did a penguin keep when it lost flight?
- A swimming stripe leads to an unexpected match with a swift. Compare what flight and swimming share, then follow a tropical branch to a penguin that lives at the equator.
- Who carries pollen when flowers live underwater?
- Marine branches stand out among freshwater relatives that share the same hold on the bottom. Their article shows which small animals carry pollen beneath the sea.
- Can a plant live on another plant without eating it?
- A host-colored branch leads to a rootless plant that can live on a tree or a fence. Set its feeding beside mistletoe's to see what a living host can supply beyond support.
- How can a turtle lead you to a hippo?
- Follow a turtle’s parasites to an unexpected host. A photograph reveals another connection, then the hippo’s own relatives carry the exploration out to sea.
- What travels with a salmon?
- A migration stripe leads from river and sea into a fish's microscopic passengers. Two bacteria share that host but live very differently, and one has a way to reach the next generation.
- How can a frog grow up without a pond?
- A different developmental color leads to eggs that hatch as tiny frogs. Compare their numbers with a familiar relative, then find the nursery plant that can carry the next generation to another island.
- Can an animal see through stone?
- A thin image-forming stripe leads to eyes embedded in armor. Set their owner beside a scallop: two shell-bearing animals, two very different ways to focus an image.
- Must clones grow the same body?
- Two reproductive colors remain together in one water flea. Its predator links show how a neighbor can change the body its young build.
- How much life can fit inside one cell?
- A flat branch leads to a cell shaped like a leaf. Explore other green microbes and their volumes, then follow a partnership to a cell with hundreds of living guests.
- Does a longer cell take up more space?
- Keep bacteria from different branches together. Their lengths and volumes show what a ruler can miss.
- Low risk for whom?
- Related bacteria carry very different risk colors. Follow a low-risk species to its insect hosts, where a human-health classification tells only part of the story.
- Can the size of an egg change who raises it?
- Find an exception in a family where fathers usually tend the nest. Set the birds and their eggs side by side for a hint at what makes two parents worth having.
- How can a bird raise a chick it never meets?
- Unusually large eggs and long incubation make one branch stand out. The father's share of the work explains how his chick can emerge ready for life alone.
- How can fossils turn a world of burrowers into drifters?
- Movement colors change dramatically when extinct branches return. Their colonies and distant relatives describe an ancient sea the living alone cannot show.
- Why catch a beetle when you can feed on sunlight?
- Two colors mark two ways of feeding in one flytrap. Following its prey across the tree shows what the beetle itself eats, and what sunlight cannot supply.
- What is a bat doing inside a carnivorous plant?
- A predatory stripe leads to a pitcher plant's unexpected neighbor. The connection explains how the plant benefits from a sleeping guest, and how that guest finds a leaf in the dark.
- Can a palm grow like a vine?
- A climbing branch stands out among palms. How far it grows leads to what holds it up, what can safely give way, and how a climbing stem becomes furniture cane.
- What brings a deep-diving fish to a seabird?
- Compare the ocean sunfish's size and depth range, then explore its feeding partners. A journey into cold water leads to an unexpected meal at the surface.
- How can a flower's appeal put it in danger?
- A narrow stripe of trade restrictions leads to an orchid on one island. The same flower draws both insects and collectors.
- What does a palm get out of serving fermented nectar?
- Feeding connections link a nocturnal tree shrew to the palm it drinks from. Inside its flowers, a mammal and a plant share their partnership with a third guest.
- How does an orchid flower without photosynthesis?
- Two close relatives carry different feeding colors. Compare them side by side and explore the hidden food supply that lets a plant live without being green.
- Were horses always horse-sized?
- Watch the family's size range shift as fossils return. The smaller branches show how much of horse history today's survivors conceal.
- How can one winter cost a tiny bat decades of life?
- Bring a bat's weight, lifespan and family size together in seconds. Its link to a fungus explains why a long life can depend on undisturbed sleep.
- How can raising one chick take longer than a year?
- Two large penguins each lay one egg, but their chicks keep different schedules. Separating time inside the egg from the next stage reveals why hatching sooner needn't mean leaving home sooner.
- What does your skeleton have in common with a seashell?
- Construction colors connect a shelled sea animal to our own branch. Is the shared material inherited from a common ancestor, or invented twice?
- Can a garden weed have a tree in the family?
- Follow an island tree back to its weedy relatives. Another flowering family leads to a climbing parrot, a surprising sign of recovery, and the trees that help set its breeding calendar.
- Why throw away a whole year's needles?
- Larch sheds its needles while fir keeps them. Put their leaf measurements side by side to see what changes when a tree builds foliage for one season instead of several.
- Do trees that share a fungus share a water strategy?
- Interaction links connect cedar and spruce through one partner. Their drought resistance and estimated water use show how alike those neighbors really are.
- When is a hot acid bath a good place to live?
- Find a cooler branch among heat-loving microbes. Compare the conditions it tolerates with those it prefers, then see what feeds it in such an unlikely home.
Data, curation and evidence
Ptree brings together biological knowledge scattered across specialist sources. Names, units and terminology are reconciled so traits can be compared across scientific classifications and distant branches of life. The original source records remain behind the interpreted values, with their citations, qualifications and licenses.
The methodology explains how source evidence becomes comparable traits and group summaries. The data inventory records the scale of that work. See Sources & licenses for the contributing providers and Citing Ptree for use in research and teaching.
Independent science publishing
Ptree is part of the Ptable network of independent science references, published by Michael Dayah. Dayah creates, designs, programs and maintains Ptree. Ptable has been accessible from the same URL for 29 years and maintained independently since 1997. Ptree brings that same commitment to the tree of life, making a vast scientific subject directly explorable without simplifying the science.
Privacy
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