ITIS

About ITIS

ITIS (Integrated Taxonomic Information System) offers a set of web services for searching and retrieving taxonomic data from its database. Access is provided through a Web Service API and a WSDL document that clients can use to connect to the service.

The APIs are organized into functional areas: search functions (by common name, scientific name, or general term matching), functions to retrieve information by TSN (taxonomic serial number) such as accepted names, synonyms, hierarchy, taxonomic rank, authorship, and geographic and jurisdictional data, hierarchy functions for navigating taxonomic relationships up and down from a given TSN, LSID (Life Science Identifier) functions for converting between TSNs and LSIDs, and meta-information functions covering credibility ratings, rank names, vernacular languages, and other reference values.

The service is intended for developers building clients or applications that need programmatic access to taxonomic classification data, including names, synonyms, hierarchical placement, and related metadata for organisms in the ITIS database.

Key features

• Search taxonomic data by common name, scientific name, or partial match
• Retrieve detailed taxon records by TSN (Taxonomic Serial Number)
• Get full taxonomic hierarchy (up or down) from a given TSN
• Look up records via LSID (Life Science Identifier)
• Access meta-information such as rank names, credibility ratings, and jurisdiction values
• WSDL document provided for building web service clients

Frequently asked questions