The evolutionary tree of living things is currently supposed to run something along the lines of that listed below. Most of the above tree was based on ideas from
cladistics; where more than two groups are shown in a single branch, there is disagreement about how they diverged. Hypothetically
taxonomy would follow the tree whenever possible, but it many places it does not at present.
- Life
- Domain Bacteria
- Aquificales
- CFB/Green? sulfur bacteria group
- Chlamydiales/Verrucomicrobia? group
- Chrysiogenes group
- Coprothermobacter group
- Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae)
- Dictyoglomus group
- Fibrobacter/Acidobacteria? group
- Firmicutes (gram-positive bacteria)
- Flexistipes group
- Fusobacteria
- Green non-sulfur bacteria
- Nitrospira group
- Proteobacteria
- Spirochaetales
- Synergistes group
- Thermodesulfobacterium group
- Thermotogales
- Thermus/Deinococcus? group
- ...
- Domain Archaea
- Crenarchaeota (extremely thermophilic archaebacteria)
- Euryarchaeota
- Korarchaeota
- ...
- Domain Eukaryota, organisms with cells containing a nucleus
- Retortamonads?
- Diplomonads?
- Oxymonads?
- Microsporidia?
- Parabasalia?
- Entamoebae
- Pelobionts
- Mitochondrial eukaryotes
- Heterolobosea (amoeboflagellates & some cellular slime moulds)
- Euglenozoa
- Naugleria?
- Jakobids?
- Ebriids?
- Ellobiopsids?
- Nucleariids
- Vampyrellids
- Chlorarchniophytes?
- Cryptomonads
- Rhodophyta? (red algae, e.g. Polysiphonia)
- Glaucocystids?
- Cercomonads?
- Malawimonads?
- Plasmodiophorids?
- Ramicristates (various lobose amoebae, e.g. Amoeba, Acanthamoeba)
- Acanthamoebidae?
- Myxomycetes? (plasmodial slime moulds, e.g. Echinostelium)
- Dictyosteliida? (some cellular slime moulds, e.g. Dictyosteliium)
- ...
- Actinophryids
- Centrohelids
- Desmothoracids
- Gymnosphaerids
- Dimorphids? (helioflagellates)
- Sticholonche?
- Acantharea
- Phaeodarea?
- Polycystinea?
- Xenophyophorea?
- Granuloreticulosa? (e.g. Foraminiferans)
- Alveolates
- Haptophytes? (e.g. coccolithophores)
- Stramenopiles
- Bicosoecids?
- Proteromonads?
- Opalines?
- Hypochytidiomycota?
- Oomycota? (water molds)
- Labyrinthulids? (slime nets, e.g. Labyrinthula)
- "Stramenochromes"
- Chrysophyta? (golden algae - PARAPHYLETIC)
- Xanthophyta? (yellow-green algae)
- Phaeophyta? (brown algae, e.g. Fucus)
- Diatoms
- Raphidiophyta?
- Eustigmatophyta?
- "Opisthokonts"
- Kingdom Plantae, plants and green algae
References:
- Colin Tudge, "The Variety of Life -- A survey and a celebration of all the creatures that have ever lived", Oxford University Press, 2000
- http://phylogeny.arizona.edu The Tree of Life -- A multi-authored, distributed Internet project containing information about phylogeny and biodiversity
/Talk