Order in a rank, eg species in family

Data Publishing
1

Hi,
I use the GBIF API with Python and it works very well. But when I use a book on birds of dragonflies or anything the order of species is always the same, but with the GBIF interface how do I get this order rather than alphabetical. I guess one of the metadata fields I can sort on, such the order matches a guide book. Is that true? Any ideas?

If this question is inappropriate, any hints or suggestions are appreciated.

Gilbert

2

Hi @Gilbert could you let us know if you are looking for occurrences or for taxon names?

3

Hello Marie,

I am building a website with my photos, with all species I determined. I used GBIF to the hierarchy from biota to kingdom downto species. See Kingdom: Animals

The question is how can order at each level, using the order that a nature guide would do. From example birds used many orders, they always end with Passeriformes, and within they end with finches.

Alphabetical order does not work of course, so I have used prefixed scientific name with number (like 40 for Passeriformes), but I hope you say ‘order by ’ at each rank.

Does that help?

4

I have noticed this convention in bird guide books, but I wonder if it’s actually ratified somewhere or just a convention among publishers. If you are working with a limited number of taxa, could you hardcode this order in?

5

@Gilbert I don’t think we have any way to achieve what you would like other than what @pieter suggests. If you want a specific order, you have to query data in that order (and hard code it somewhere).

6

Thanks for the suggestion and final answers. I am going to support pre-fixing the scientific names with numbers such that I can sort on them.
Gilbert

7

I believe Python supports sorting in any custom order you like, just to save you the hassle in case you ever want to add a taxon in the middle: list - Sort elements with specific order in python - Stack Overflow, How to Write Custom Sort Functions in Python | LearnPython.com