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14.1: Introduction

Last updated

Jan 30, 2025
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- 14: Diversity of Life
- 14.2: Organizing Life on Earth

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Photo shows a bee collecting nectar from a flower.

Figure $\PageIndex{1}$ A bee's life is very different from a flower's, but the two organisms are related. Both are members of the domain Eukarya and have cells containing many similar organelles, genes, and proteins. (credit: modification of work by John Beetham)

This bee and Echinacea flower (Figure 20.1) could not look more different, yet they are related, as are all living organisms on Earth. By following pathways of similarities and changes—both visible and genetic—scientists seek to map the evolutionary past of how life developed from single-celled organisms to the tremendous collection of creatures that have germinated, crawled, floated, swum, flown, and walked on this planet.

Contributors and Attributions

Remixed and/or curated from the following works:

Fowler, S., Roush, R., & Wise, J. (2013). 12 Introduction. In Concepts of Biology. OpenStax (CC BY 4.0; Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/concepts-biology/pages/1-introduction).

Contributors and Attributions

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