GBIF Species & Occurrence API Scraper

Extract biodiversity data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) — the world's largest aggregator of species taxonomy and georeferenced occurrence records.

This actor exposes a dual-mode interface:

• Species mode — paginate species/search, then fan-out to 4 enrichment endpoints per taxon: vernacular names, synonyms, geographic distributions, and descriptions. Produces fully-denormalised taxonomy rows.
• Occurrence mode — stream occurrence/search results with geo coordinates, collection metadata, and observer info. Year-range chunking automatically bypasses GBIF's 100,000-offset cap for deep pulls.

No API key. Public data, cleanly returned.

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Why GBIF?

GBIF indexes 1.4 million Plantae species and billions of georeferenced occurrence records contributed by natural-history museums, herbaria, and citizen-science platforms worldwide. The data is public-domain and updated continuously.

Who uses this actor:

• Ecological niche / species distribution modellers (SDM/MaxEnt workflows)
• Conservation NGOs building species-range databases
• AI training-data builders (botanical vision datasets, biodiversity LLMs)
• University labs needing bulk taxonomy or occurrence point extracts
• Agtech and GIS / land-use analytics teams

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Modes

Species Mode (mode: "species")

Paginates https://api.gbif.org/v1/species/search and emits one row per taxon. With enrich: true (default), each taxon gets 4 additional API calls:

Sub-resource	What it adds
/species/{key}/vernacularNames	Common names in all languages
/species/{key}/synonyms	Synonym names
/species/{key}/distributions	Geographic range with establishment status
/species/{key}/descriptions	Habitat, ecology, and conservation notes

Set enrich: false to skip enrichment for faster bulk taxonomy extraction.

Occurrence Mode (mode: "occurrence")

Paginates https://api.gbif.org/v1/occurrence/search and emits one row per observation. Each row includes coordinates, collection metadata, observer, date, and basis of record.

100k offset cap: GBIF limits occurrence search offsets to 100,000 records per query. For deeper pulls, set yearFrom and yearTo — the actor automatically chunks by year, running one paginated query per year and concatenating results. A 10-year range with 100k records per year gives 1M+ records.

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Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	"species"	"species" or "occurrence"
query	string	—	Free-text search (e.g. "Acer saccharum", "Quercus")
higherTaxonKey	integer	—	GBIF backbone key for a higher taxon (6 = Plantae, 1 = Animalia)
rank	string	—	Species-mode filter: SPECIES, GENUS, FAMILY, etc.
taxonomicStatus	string	—	Species-mode filter: ACCEPTED, SYNONYM, DOUBTFUL
datasetKey	string	—	Restrict to a specific GBIF dataset UUID
countryCode	string	—	Occurrence-mode filter: ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (e.g. "US")
yearFrom	integer	—	Occurrence-mode: earliest year; enables year-chunking
yearTo	integer	—	Occurrence-mode: latest year
hasCoordinate	boolean	false	Occurrence-mode: only return records with coordinates
enrich	boolean	true	Species-mode: fetch vernacular names, synonyms, distributions, descriptions
maxItems	integer	15	Maximum records to return (0 = unlimited, requires a filter)

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Output

Each record is emitted as a flat JSON object. Fields unused by the current mode are null.

Species record example

{
  "record_type": "species",
  "gbif_key": 3189834,
  "nub_key": 3189834,
  "scientific_name": "Acer saccharum Marshall",
  "canonical_name": "Acer saccharum",
  "authorship": "Marshall",
  "rank": "SPECIES",
  "taxonomic_status": "ACCEPTED",
  "kingdom": "Plantae",
  "phylum": "Tracheophyta",
  "class": "Magnoliopsida",
  "order": "Sapindales",
  "family": "Sapindaceae",
  "genus": "Acer",
  "species": "Acer saccharum",
  "dataset_key": "d7dddbf4-2cf0-4f39-9b2a-bb099caae36c",
  "vernacular_names": "Sugar Maple [en] | Érable à sucre [fr] | Zuckerahorn [de]",
  "synonyms": "Acer saccharophorum K.Koch | Saccharodendron saccharum (Marshall) Nieuwl.",
  "distributions": "United States (NATIVE) | Canada (NATIVE)",
  "descriptions": "[habitat] Mesic deciduous forests, often with beech and yellow birch",
  "gbif_url": "https://www.gbif.org/species/3189834",
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-18T10:00:00.000Z"
}

Occurrence record example

{
  "record_type": "occurrence",
  "gbif_key": 3189834,
  "scientific_name": "Acer saccharum Marshall",
  "canonical_name": "Acer saccharum",
  "rank": "SPECIES",
  "kingdom": "Plantae",
  "family": "Sapindaceae",
  "occurrence_key": 4530178441,
  "decimal_latitude": 44.3601,
  "decimal_longitude": -72.6519,
  "country_code": "US",
  "state_province": "Vermont",
  "event_date": "2023-09-24",
  "basis_of_record": "HUMAN_OBSERVATION",
  "recorded_by": "John Doe",
  "institution_code": "iNaturalist",
  "coordinate_uncertainty_m": 12,
  "gbif_url": "https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/4530178441",
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-18T10:00:00.000Z"
}

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Usage Examples

All Plantae species (ACCEPTED, no enrichment, fast)

{
  "mode": "species",
  "higherTaxonKey": 6,
  "rank": "SPECIES",
  "taxonomicStatus": "ACCEPTED",
  "enrich": false,
  "maxItems": 10000
}

Sugar Maple occurrences in the US with coordinates (2020-2024)

{
  "mode": "occurrence",
  "query": "Acer saccharum",
  "countryCode": "US",
  "hasCoordinate": true,
  "yearFrom": 2020,
  "yearTo": 2024,
  "maxItems": 0
}

Quercus genus with full enrichment

{
  "mode": "species",
  "query": "Quercus",
  "rank": "SPECIES",
  "enrich": true,
  "maxItems": 500
}

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Rate Limits & Polite Use

GBIF does not publish a hard rate limit but asks heavy users to be considerate. This actor uses:

• 300 records per page (GBIF maximum for occurrence search)
• 200 ms delay between pages
• Up to 3 concurrent enrichment calls per species batch
• Identifies itself via User-Agent: OrbLabs/gbif-species-occurrence-api-scraper

For very large runs (millions of records), consider using the GBIF download API for a pre-packaged export instead.

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Pricing

Pay-per-result (PPE). You pay only for records actually extracted. No charge for idle time spent waiting on GBIF's API.

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Notes

• GBIF data is licensed under CC BY 4.0 or CC0 depending on the contributing dataset. Always check individual dataset licenses before commercial use.
• The GBIF backbone (datasetKey: d7dddbf4-2cf0-4f39-9b2a-bb099caae36c) is the authoritative taxonomy for 49M+ taxa.
• Occurrence records are georeferenced observations contributed by iNaturalist, eBird, natural history collections, and citizen science platforms.

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Further reading: ISBN Database Access and Other Open Reference Data in Bulk