Search species occurrence records via the GBIF Occurrence API
domain: api.gbif.org · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Send a GET request to https://api.gbif.org/v1/occurrence/search with query parameters such as scientificName, country, year, or taxonKey
Use repeatable parameters (e.g. multiple country=... entries) to match any of several values for that field
For range queries (e.g. year), pass a single comma-joined value like year=1990,2020
Page through results using the limit and offset parameters, respecting the API's maximum offset for real-time search
For bulk/large-scale extraction beyond what search paging supports, use the asynchronous GBIF download API instead of repeated search calls
Handle HTTP 429 responses by reducing request rate; GBIF may throttle rapid or numerous search queries
Known gotchas
Real-time search is not intended for exhaustive bulk retrieval — beyond a certain offset/result-count threshold, use the asynchronous occurrence download API instead
Range query syntax (comma-joined lower,upper) is easy to misconstruct as two separate parameters instead of one combined value
Occurrence data quality varies by source dataset; fields like coordinates or dates may be missing or flagged with issues that should be checked in the response
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