The URL paths documented in this section provide access to taxonomic names stored in the Paleobiology Database. Names can be selected either by name, by unique identifier, or by their relationship to another name. For example, it is easy to query for all of the subtaxa or supertaxa of a given taxon.
Follow this link for more information on the use of taxonomic names in this data service.
The following URL paths are available:
| Single taxon |
This operation returns information about a single taxonomic name, specified either by name or by identifier. Follow this link for more information on the use of taxonomic names in this data service. For example: |
| List of taxa |
This operation returns information about multiple taxonomic names, selected according to the criteria you specify. This operation could be used to query for all of the children or parents of a given taxon, among other operations. For example: |
| Opinions about taxa |
This operation returns information about the taxonomic opinions used to build the taxonomic hierarchy. From all of the opinions entered into the database about a particular taxon, the most recent opinion that is stated with the most evidence is used to classify that taxon. The others are considered to be superseded and are ignored. For example: |
| Taxonomy of fossil occurrences |
This operation returns the taxonomic hierarchy of a selected set of fossil occurrences. You can select the set of occurrences to be analyzed using any of the parameters that are valid for the occs/list operation. You can make requests using both both operations with identical parameters, which will give you both a list of occurrences and a summary tabulation by taxon. If you include the block subcounts, then each taxon record will include a count of the number of species, genera, etc. from the selected set of occurrences that are contained within that taxon. For example: |
| Bibliographic references for taxa |
This operation returns information about the bibliographic references associated with taxonomic names. You can pass identical filtering parameters to /data1.2/taxa/list_doc.html and to /data1.2/taxa/refs_doc.html, which will give you both a list of taxonomic names and a list of the associated references. For example: |
| Taxa grouped by bibliographic reference |
This operation returns information about taxonomic names, grouped according to the bibliographic reference in which they are mentioned. This is a companion operation to taxa/refs, and you can use the two together to retrieve a list of references and a list of taxa grouped by reference. You can then match the two lists using the reference_no/rid field. For this reason, this operation takes all of the parameters that taxa/refs does. You can also use this operation simply to list the taxa mentioned in a given reference or a set of references selected by reference identifier, author, year of publication, etc. For example: |
| Auto-completion for taxonomic names |
This operation returns a list of names matching the given prefix or partial name. You can use it for auto-completion of taxonomic names in a client application. For example: |
| Thumbnail images of lifeforms |
This operation returns an image to represent the specified taxon, or else information about the image. If the suffix is .png, then the image content data is returned. Otherwise, a descriptive record is returned in the specified format. These 64x64 thumbnail images are sourced from http://phylopic.org/. If multiple images are available for a particular taxon, one has been arbitrarily selected. You can obtain image identifiers by including show=img with any taxonomic name query. For example: |
| Icon images of lifeforms |
This operation returns an image to represent the specified taxon, or else information about the image. If the suffix is .png, then the image content data is returned. Otherwise, a descriptive record is returned in the specified format. These 32x32 icon (blue silhouette) images are sourced from http://phylopic.org/. If multiple images are available for a particular taxon, one has been arbitrarily selected. You can obtain image identifiers by including show=img with any taxonomic name query. For example: |
This service is provided by the Paleobiology Database, hosted by the Department of Geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
If you have questions about this data service, or wish to report a bug, please contact the database administrator at admin@paleobiodb.org
