GBIF Biodiversity Scraper — Species & Occurrences

Search and export GBIF — the Global Biodiversity Information Facility — into clean JSON, CSV, Excel or XML. Pull species taxonomy (scientific name, rank, full kingdom-to-genus classification, taxonomic status) or occurrence records (geographic coordinates, country, observation date, basis of record, source dataset) for any organism in GBIF's billion-record biodiversity index.

Built for researchers, ecologists, conservation teams and data pipelines that need structured biodiversity data at scale instead of clicking through the GBIF portal one page at a time.

What does the GBIF Biodiversity Scraper do?

Give it a name to search — a scientific name like Panthera leo, a genus, or a common word like oak — pick a mode, and the actor paginates through GBIF and returns one clean row per result:

• Species mode — one row per taxon: scientificName, canonicalName, rank, the full taxonomy (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus), status and numDescendants.
• Occurrences mode — one row per recorded observation: scientificName, country, decimalLatitude, decimalLongitude, eventDate, basisOfRecord and datasetName.

What data can you get?

Species mode

Field	Type	Description
key	integer	GBIF taxon key (unique taxon identifier)
scientificName	string	Full scientific name, including authorship where available
canonicalName	string	Canonical name without authorship
rank	string	Taxonomic rank, e.g. SPECIES, GENUS, FAMILY
kingdom	string	Kingdom in the classification
phylum	string	Phylum in the classification
class	string	Class in the classification
order	string	Order in the classification
family	string	Family in the classification
genus	string	Genus in the classification
status	string	Taxonomic status, e.g. ACCEPTED, SYNONYM
numDescendants	integer	Number of descendant taxa under this taxon

Occurrences mode

Field	Type	Description
key	integer	GBIF occurrence key (unique record identifier)
scientificName	string	Scientific name recorded for the observation
country	string	Country where the organism was recorded
decimalLatitude	number	Latitude in decimal degrees
decimalLongitude	number	Longitude in decimal degrees
eventDate	string	Date the observation was made
basisOfRecord	string	Record basis, e.g. HUMAN_OBSERVATION, PRESERVED_SPECIMEN
datasetName	string	Name of the source dataset that published the record

Use cases

• Ecology & conservation research — map where a species has been recorded and how many observations exist over time.
• Taxonomy lookups — resolve a name to its GBIF taxon key and full classification for downstream enrichment.
• Species distribution modelling — pull georeferenced occurrence points for a taxon, filtered by country and year.
• Biodiversity dashboards — feed clean, structured records into your own analytics or mapping tools.
• Education — build teaching datasets of species and their real-world observation records.

How to use it

1. Add the GBIF Biodiversity Scraper to your Apify account and open the input form.
2. Choose a Mode — species for taxonomy, occurrences for observation records.
3. Enter a Search query (e.g. Panthera leo).
4. For occurrences, optionally filter by Country (ISO2 code), Year, and whether records must have coordinates.
5. Set Max items to cap the export, then Run.
6. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or pull it via the Apify API.

Input

{
  "mode": "occurrences",
  "query": "Panthera leo",
  "country": "KE",
  "hasCoordinate": true,
  "maxItems": 500
}

Field	Type	Description
mode	string	species (taxonomy) or occurrences (observation records).
query	string	Free-text search term, usually a scientific or common name.
rank	string	Species mode: restrict to a single rank (e.g. SPECIES, GENUS).
country	string	Occurrences mode: ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (e.g. KE).
year	integer	Occurrences mode: filter to a single observation year.
hasCoordinate	boolean	Occurrences mode: only records that carry coordinates.
maxItems	integer	Maximum records to return (default 1000).

Output

{
  "key": 5013750474,
  "scientificName": "Panthera leo (Linnaeus, 1758)",
  "country": "Kenya",
  "decimalLatitude": -1.399759,
  "decimalLongitude": 34.906483,
  "eventDate": "2013-10-15T00:00",
  "basisOfRecord": "HUMAN_OBSERVATION",
  "datasetName": "iNaturalist research-grade observations"
}

FAQ

What is GBIF? GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) is an open-data network that aggregates species and occurrence records from museums, herbaria, research projects and citizen-science platforms worldwide.

How many records can I get? As many as your search returns — GBIF holds billions of occurrence records. Use Max items to cap a run and keep it cheap.

How does billing work? You pay only per record you get, so small, tightly filtered runs stay inexpensive.

What export formats are supported? JSON, CSV, Excel and XML, plus direct access via the Apify API.

Can I use this with n8n? Yes. Run the GBIF Biodiversity Scraper from n8n with the Apify node — trigger a run, wait for it to finish, and read the dataset items straight into your workflow to enrich records, build maps or drive alerts. It also works with Make, Zapier and the Apify API.

Can I connect this to other tools? The GBIF Biodiversity Scraper connects with almost any cloud service or web app through integrations on the Apify platform — Make, Zapier, Slack, Google Drive and many more, plus webhooks to trigger an action whenever a run finishes.

Is this only public data? Yes. It returns only openly published biodiversity data. You are responsible for compliance with GBIF's terms and the licence of each source dataset.

Notes

Original clean-room implementation. Not affiliated with GBIF. Data is contributed by GBIF's publishing network and made available under open licences; cite the original datasets where required.