What Can You Do with a TaxonWorks API?

Abstract

TaxonWorks is a web-based workbench facilitating curation of a broad cross-section of biodiversity informatics concepts. Its development is currently led by the Species File Group. TaxonWorks has a large, JSON serving, application programming interface (API). This API is slowly being exposed for external use. The API is documented at https://api.taxonworks.org. Here we highlight some existing key features of the API focusing on the TaxonWorks concepts of People, Sources, Collection Objects, Taxon Names, and Downloads and provide a brief roadmap for upcoming additions. Highlights include the ability for data curators to produce shareable bibliographies, DarwinCore Archives (DwC-A), and Catalogue of Life-formatted datasets, access their nomenclature as autocompletes and via many filter facets, share Person metadata including numerous identifier types, and perform basic Geo-JSON and simple DwC-A parameter-based filtering on Collection Objects. As examples of what can be done with the API, we provide several visualizations that are straightforward to implement by those with basic R, Python, Javascript, or Ruby programming skills.