UF researchers reveal first Tree of Life for all 2.3 million named species

In the mid-’90s, many of Doug Soltis’ colleagues told him that creating a tree of life – a map of Earth’s 2.3 million named species and the connections between them – couldn’t be done. Two decades later, the University of Florida plant biologist and colleagues have proved their detractors wrong, publishing the first draft of a Tree of Life that covers every named organism on the planet. Just as the sequencing of the human genome led to advances in medicine…