Open Tree of Life API
The tree of life as an API — powered by the Open Tree of Life, the project that unifies published phylogenetic trees and taxonomies into a single synthetic tree spanning about 2.3 million named species. Resolve any scientific name to its canonical taxon and Open Tree Taxonomy (OTT) id (cross-referenced to NCBI, GBIF and other sources); read a taxon's classification and full lineage of ancestors up the tree (genus, family, order, class, …); and compute the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of any set of species — the heart of comparative biology and "how related are these organisms?" questions. From Homo sapiens and the great apes to any branch of plants, fungi, animals and microbes, it is ideal for biology, evolution, ecology, education and bioinformatics tools. An evolutionary-tree / phylogenetics reference — distinct from species-occurrence data (biodiversity / GBIF), marine taxonomy (WoRMS) and sequence databases. Open data from the Open Tree of Life project (CC0).
api.oanor.com/opentol-api