Species name to taxonomy + occurrence count (GBIF) API

Matches a common or scientific name against the GBIF backbone taxonomy and returns the accepted name, the full Linnaean hierarchy (kingdom to species), rank, accepted/synonym status, match confidence, and the global occurrence count of how many times the species has actually been recorded. The value-add: joining the fuzzy name-match endpoint to the occurrence-count endpoint so a messy name becomes a clean, evidence-backed taxonomy record. Answers 'what is the taxonomy of a lion', 'scientific name for this animal', 'how many observations of this species', 'classify this organism'.

Price$0.01per request

MethodPOST

Route/v1/data/gbif-species

StatusLive

MIME typeapplication/json

Rate limit60/minute

Cache3600s public

datagbifspeciestaxonomybiodiversityoccurrencebiologyscientific-name

API URLhttps://x402.hexl.dev/v1/data/gbif-species

Integration docs

Example request

{
  "name": "Panthera leo"
}

Example response

{
  "query": "Panthera leo",
  "matched": true,
  "matchType": "EXACT",
  "confidence": 99,
  "species": {
    "gbifKey": 2435099,
    "scientificName": "Panthera leo (Linnaeus, 1758)",
    "canonicalName": "Panthera leo",
    "rank": "SPECIES",
    "status": "ACCEPTED",
    "isSynonym": false,
    "taxonomy": {
      "kingdom": "Animalia",
      "phylum": "Chordata",
      "class": "Mammalia",
      "order": "Carnivora",
      "family": "Felidae",
      "genus": "Panthera",
      "species": "Panthera leo"
    },
    "occurrenceCount": 12453,
    "gbifUrl": "https://www.gbif.org/species/2435099"
  }
}

Input schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "required": [
    "name"
  ],
  "properties": {
    "name": {
      "type": "string",
      "examples": [
        "lion",
        "Panthera leo",
        "monarch butterfly"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Output schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "additionalProperties": true
}