Catalogue of Life

liveBiologyScience

Global taxonomic index of known species (~2.2M accepted names). Keyless.

8tools
0msauth
free tier50 calls/day

Tools

name_matchrequired: scientific_name

Exact scientific-name match.

Parameters
NameTypeDescription
scientific_namereqstring—
authorshipoptstring—
datasetoptstring—
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usagerequired: id

Name-usage by id.

Parameters
NameTypeDescription
idreqstring—
datasetoptstring—
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taxonrequired: id

Taxon by id.

Parameters
NameTypeDescription
idreqstring—
datasetoptstring—
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classificationrequired: id

Classification chain.

Parameters
NameTypeDescription
idreqstring—
datasetoptstring—
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vernacularrequired: id

Vernacular (common) names.

Parameters
NameTypeDescription
idreqstring—
datasetoptstring—
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synonymsrequired: id

Synonyms.

Parameters
NameTypeDescription
idreqstring—
datasetoptstring—
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childrenrequired: id

Direct child taxa.

Parameters
NameTypeDescription
idreqstring—
datasetoptstring—
limitoptnumber—
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Test with curl

The gateway speaks JSON-RPC 2.0 over HTTP POST. You can test any pack directly from the terminal.

List available tools
bash
curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/catalogueoflife/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}'
Call a tool
bash
curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/catalogueoflife/mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"search","arguments":{"query": "hello"}}}'

Use with the SDK

Install @pipeworx/sdk to call tools from any TypeScript/Node project.

TypeScript
import { Pipeworx } from '@pipeworx/sdk';
const px = new Pipeworx();
const result = await px.call("search", {"query":"example"});
ask_pipeworx
// Or ask in plain English:
const answer = await px.ask("global taxonomic index of known species (~2");