Taxonomy Tree

Browse a selection of 278 taxa from an NCBI Taxonomy snapshot retrieved on 2 October 2026. Select a card to see its description and included subgroups. The path above it lets you return to any included ancestor; Overview returns to cellular life.

Search

Search scientific names, selected former names and descriptions in the current language. Multiple words must all occur in a taxon’s indexed text. Accents and case are ignored. Exact name matches appear first. Select a result to open that taxon and its parent path.

How to read the hierarchy

The path contains only taxa in this selection. Intermediate groups may be omitted, so a displayed parent is the nearest included ancestor, not necessarily the immediate biological parent. “No further taxa” means that the dataset has no additional entries here; it does not imply that the group has no descendants. A clade is a lineage, not a fixed taxonomic rank.

Ranks and ancestry come from NCBI; short descriptions are editorial summaries. For example, birds appear within Sauropsida, animals and fungi within Opisthokonta, and green plants include green algae and land plants. Older names such as Proteobacteria can still be found. Obsolete catch-all groups such as Protista are not treated as current taxa.

Scope and source

This is a filtered classification overview, not a complete species database, dated evolutionary tree or calculated phylogeny. It uses the three-domain classification; deep evolutionary relationships and taxonomy continue to be studied. NCBI Taxonomy is a curated reference and is not the final authority for nomenclature. The NCBI link opens the taxon’s external record in a new tab. Data do not update automatically.

Search and navigation run locally in the browser. A cookie can retain the search and selected taxon. The full selection is saved in the repository; external records are requested only when you open their links.