Welcome to the Biodiversity Institute! Through our website, I would like to invite you to explore the life of the planet with us. Accompany our scientists and students on global expeditions. Browse our collections of almost 9 million plants and animals, from dinosaurs to sea anemones, from birds of paradise to coelacanths. Tour our Natural History Museum and its galleries of evolution of life on earth. Meet our research scientists, our graduate and undergraduate students and our staff members who make all this possible. This is our most important time in human history. Our mission is simple: We study the life of the planet to inform its stewardship. We document the diversity of life--the millions of species of plants and animals, past and present. We decipher the tree of life, the intricate evolutionary kinships among these plants and animals and how they came to be. We decode the language of life, the genes that bind all humans, plants and animals to the first bacteria more than three billion years ago. We unravel the web of life, the complex forests, grasslands and oceans that are the life support systems of the planet. We reconstruct the past cultures of archaeological peoples and their relationship to the natural world. Then we tell the grand stories that emerge from this research, and we train generations of students in the science and art of advancing this knowledge. We welcome you to explore with us.

Leonard Krishtalka