Global Comprehensive Species Service

NatureServe Explorer provides data on over 70,000 of the plant and animal species of the United States and Canada. The Global Comprehensive Species Service provides direct access to this species data in easy to manipulate XML format, ideal for further analysis.

URL

https://services.natureserve.org/idd/rest/ns/v1.1/globalSpecies/comprehensive

Parameters

Parameter	Description
uid	A comma separated list of species Unique ID's for species in NatureServe Explorer, e.g., ‘ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.453627,ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.123456’.
NSAccessKeyId	Access Key, available free to registered users.

Output

XML schema	http://services.natureserve.org/docs/schemas/biodiversityDataFlow/1/
Root element	globalSpeciesList
Detailed documentation	http://services.natureserve.org/docs/schemas/biodiversityDataFlow/1/1/ documentation_comprehensiveSpecies_v1.1.xml

Sample service calls (live)

Get single species (Golden Eagle):
https://services.natureserve.org/idd/rest/ns/v1.1/globalSpecies/comprehensive?
uid=ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.100925&NSAccessKeyId=72ddf45a-c751-44c7-9bca-8db3b4513347

[Note that the data is arranged in a similar hierarchy to this NatureServe Explorer report.]

Get multiple species:
https://services.natureserve.org/idd/rest/ns/v1.1/globalSpecies/comprehensive?
uid=ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.100925,ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.104470&NSAccessKeyId=72ddf45a-c751-44c7-9bca-8db3b4513347

See also

Essentials, for general useful information, common to all services.

Current Version: v1.1

All previous versions are now deprecated. Any users of version 1.0 are encouraged to migrate to v1.1.