EU BON taxonomic backbone

The Unified Taxonomic Information Service (UTIS) is the taxonomic backbone for the EU BON project

The EU BON taxonomic backbone allows running a federated search on multiple European checklists and returns a unified result set of the individual responses of the various checklists. It is intended to be used by machines (via web services), not by humans.

UTIS connects the web services of the Pan-European Species directories Infrastructure (EU-Nomen) and EUNIS which fully covers Natura 2000. Therefore UTIS can be used in full compliance to Appendix 3 of the the INSPIRE directive. Furthermore it connects the Catalogue of Life (CoL), the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), the GBIF Checklist Bank, the Plazi TreatmentBank, Phycobank and DiatomBase.

Via the GBIF Checklist Bank the following check lists are made easily available in UTIS by listing them in the /capabilities response: GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, International Plant Names Index, The Plant List with literature, GBIF Type Specimen Names , Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS), TAXREF, Global Names Usage Bank, Index Fungorum, The Paleobiology Database, ZooBank
All other GBIF data sources can also be used with UTIS even if not explicitly listed.

Currently it is possible to search for taxa and synonyms by scientific name or vernacular name strings. In case the search string is matching a synonym the according accepted taxon is resolved. UTIS provides furthermore a special search mode for resolving taxon identifiers.
The responses of the search web service always include information on the classification and optionally on related taxa as far as this data is delivered by the connected checklist providers.

Documentation of the RESTful UTIS service api.

The service is being developed by the Center for Biodiversity Informatics and Collection Data Integration of the Botanic Garden Berlin.

v1.3.0