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ITIS

Federal taxonomy: names, authors, and TSNs

🔭 Science & SpaceHEALTHYchecked 12h ago
AUTH NONECORS ✗AGENT ✓HTTPS ✓COMMERCIAL ?

The Integrated Taxonomic Information System is a U.S. government database of scientific names for plants, animals, fungi, and microbes. Its JSON web service matches a search term to taxa, returning each name's author, validity, and taxonomic serial number. Authoritative and free to query.

76HOW IT'S SCORED ⓘ
Docs ↗
Status badge · for your READMEshipapis health badge: 76 · healthy
Uptime history
97.1%90 days
96.7%30 days
1767P50 · ms
4785P95 · ms
operationalpartialdownno data
Response time · last 48 checks
Fastest 1093 ms, slowest 3642 ms, most recent 1229 ms.
Live response samplecaptured by our last successful check
GET https://www.itis.gov/ITISWebService/jsonservice/getITISTermsFromScientificName?srchKey=Tardigrada

{
  "class": "gov.usgs.itis.itis_service.data.SvcItisTermList",
  "itisTerms": [
    {
      "author": "(Ehrenberg, 1832)",
      "nameUsage": "valid",
      "scientificName": "Rotaria tardigrada",
      "tsn": "58274"
    }
  ]
}
Call itcurl · fetch · python
curl "https://www.itis.gov/ITISWebService/jsonservice/getITISTermsFromScientificName?srchKey=Tardigrada"
const res = await fetch("https://www.itis.gov/ITISWebService/jsonservice/getITISTermsFromScientificName?srchKey=Tardigrada");
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);
import requests

res = requests.get("https://www.itis.gov/ITISWebService/jsonservice/getITISTermsFromScientificName?srchKey=Tardigrada")
print(res.json())

BROWSER CALLS BLOCKED (NO CORS/HTTPS) — USE THE CURL SNIPPET

Endpoints · 3HealthyFULL DOCS ↗
Monitored path responding — GET /getITISTermsFromScientificName?srchKey=Tardigrada1767 mschecked 12h ago
GET/getITISTermsFromScientificName?srchKey=TardigradaPROBED

Federal taxonomy: names, authors, and TSNs

GET/getITISTermsFromScientificName?limit=5

GetITISTermsFromScientificName — documented GET route.

GET/getITISTermsFromScientificName?page=1

GetITISTermsFromScientificName — documented GET route.

Machine-readable spec

We probe a documented GET and expect 2xx JSON — full uptime and health score. Export includes every documented route below.

Response-shape history

Stable. No schema drift observed since monitoring began — the response shape has not changed under our checks.

ITIS: common questions

Is ITIS free to use?

Yes — ITIS is a free science & space API. Free tier: Free — limits not published. Whether the free tier allows commercial use is unclear — check the provider docs.

Does ITIS need an API key?

No — ITIS needs no API key or signup. You can call it straight away; rate limits still apply (Unpublished).

Can I call ITIS from the browser?

Not directly — ITIS doesn't send browser-friendly CORS headers, so call it from a server or proxy instead. Copy the curl or Python snippet on this page to get started.

Is ITIS up right now?

As of our last scheduled check, ITIS is healthy with 97.1% uptime over 90 days and a 1767 ms median response. We re-probe it every sweep — the status badge and uptime chart above always show the latest.