What am I looking at?
InfiniteSpecies turns a biological taxonomy into a map of nested circles. A group contains its smaller groups, and you can move from broad branches to individual organisms. The hierarchy comes from Open Tree of Life taxonomy. The circle arrangement is a way to make that hierarchy explorable; it is not a timeline, a geographic map, or a measurement of genetic distance.
Read the nesting, not the distance
Start with a large circle and look at the groups inside it. Enter one of those groups to focus on that branch. Two circles being near each other on screen does not, by itself, tell you how closely their organisms are related. Follow their containing groups and the navigation trail instead. Taxonomic classifications also change as knowledge develops; the map represents its loaded dataset, not every unresolved scientific question.
Try a two-minute exploration
Open the map and search for human or Homo sapiens. Read the information card, then choose Back to see the containing group. Open See what’s inside to inspect the names in that branch. Next, reset the view and search for birds or Aves. Notice how the navigation trail changes. You can use the same approach with an organism you know from a garden, a park, or a biology lesson.
Explore with a mouse, touch, or keyboard
Scroll or use the + and − buttons to change the zoom. Click a group to focus the branch; use Back or the trail to return. On a phone, pinch to zoom, drag to move, and tap a circle to explore it. Keyboard users can reach the search field and See what’s inside with Tab and activate controls with Enter. Pin a card if you want to keep reading while moving around.
Take a discovery with you
Use the share button in the map to copy a link to the selected group or organism. Opening that link starts the map at its destination. For a reading page that works without loading the map, share one of the introductions below.