`search`

Pack: catalogueoflife · Endpoint: https://gateway.pipeworx.io/catalogueoflife/mcp

“What is the scientific name of [animal/plant]” / “what family does [species] belong to” / “look up [organism] taxonomy” / “find [genus/family] in the tree of life” / “common name → Latin binomial” / “is [name] a real species” — AUTHORITATIVE taxonomic lookup for any species, genus, family, or higher taxon. Source: Catalogue of Life — the global consensus checklist of every known living organism (~2.1M accepted species names plus synonyms). Returns matching name-usages with scientific name, authorship, rank (kingdom→species), status (accepted | synonym | misapplied), and taxon ID for follow-up calls to taxon or classification. Filter by rank (“species” / “genus” / etc.) when narrowing.

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Description
`query`	string	yes	Free-text search (e.g. “Panthera leo”).
`dataset`	string	no	ChecklistBank dataset key (default ”${DEFAULT_DATASET}” = COL latest release).
`limit`	number	no	1-1000 (default 25).
`offset`	number	no
`rank`	string	no	e.g. “species”, “genus”, “family”
`status`	string	no	accepted \| synonym \| bare_name \| missapplied \| …

Example call

Arguments

{
  "query": "Panthera leo"
}

curl

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/catalogueoflife/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"search","arguments":{"query":"Panthera leo"}}}'

TypeScript (@pipeworx/sdk)

import { Pipeworx } from '@pipeworx/sdk';
const pipeworx = new Pipeworx();

const result = await pipeworx.call('search', {
  "query": "Panthera leo"
});

More examples

{
  "query": "Canis",
  "rank": "genus",
  "limit": 50
}

Response shape

Field	Type	Description
`offset`	number	Result offset
`limit`	number	Result limit
`result`	array	Array of matching name usages

Full JSON Schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "description": "Search results for name-usage query",
  "properties": {
    "offset": {
      "type": "number",
      "description": "Result offset"
    },
    "limit": {
      "type": "number",
      "description": "Result limit"
    },
    "result": {
      "type": "array",
      "description": "Array of matching name usages",
      "items": {
        "type": "object"
      }
    }
  }
}

Connect

Add this to your MCP client config, or use one-click install buttons:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "catalogueoflife": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/catalogueoflife/mcp"
    }
  }
}

See Getting Started for client-specific install steps.

search