Integrations

GBIF nearby species

The app queries the published GBIF occurrence record around your current position and returns the taxa that have been recorded there, arranged in a taxonomic tree you can expand level by level and download from. It shows which groups are represented, how many distinct species (or higher taxa, at the detail level you choose) each group holds in the published record, and which names belong to those groups, before you start your own recording.

Opening it

The entry point is the Download nearby species (GBIF) card under Menu → Admin → General; it is also offered during first-run setup. Scroll to the card and tap Download nearby species. The query runs against the live GBIF API, so you need a connection. Run it before you leave for the field, not once you have lost signal.

What the query returns

The query looks at GBIF occurrence records within 20 km of your current position and groups them by phylum, giving for each phylum the number of distinct taxa at the chosen detail level (species by default). The sheet shows the top-level summary once Get data has run.

On opening, the sheet shows two controls and two buttons:

• Detail level (Phylum, Class, Order, Family or Species; Species is the default) — sets how far down the taxonomy the download goes when you tick a group.
• Also download parent taxa (kingdom → genus) checkbox — off by default; covered in its own section below.
• Get data — takes a GPS fix and loads the taxonomic tree for the area. Nothing is downloaded yet.
• Done — closes the sheet.

Once the tree has loaded the header reads, for example, "9 phyla within 20 km — expand a level and tick taxa to download.", a Select all row appears above the tree, and a Download N selected button replaces Get data.

The example below is from one mountain survey. Your own site will return its own figures.

Drilling down

Tap a phylum to expand it to its constituent classes, and tap a class to expand to orders. At each level the number in brackets is the count of distinct taxa at the chosen detail level recorded under that group within the search radius. A count shown as 1,000+ has hit the query cap.

Continuing the same example: Tracheophyta expands to Magnoliopsida 711, Liliopsida 165, Polypodiopsida 13, Pinopsida 4, Gnetopsida 2. Expanding Magnoliopsida gives Asterales 115, Lamiales 100, Fabales 93, Rosales 56, Caryophyllales 49, each shown with its vernacular name.

The counts are numbers of distinct taxa in the published record, not record totals and not abundance estimates. A high count means many taxa in that group have been recorded and published for this area; a low count means the group is either genuinely species-poor here or simply under-surveyed and under-published. The distinction matters when you use the figures to plan work — see the section on survey planning below.

Detail level and parent taxa

The Detail level control sets the rank down to which taxa are downloaded when you tick a group. At Species, the download includes all species in GBIF's record for that group within the radius. If you are working at a coarser resolution — mapping genera only, for example — you can set the detail level to Family, Order, Class or Phylum to reduce the volume of names brought onto the device.

The Also download parent taxa (kingdom → genus) checkbox controls whether the higher ranks are fetched alongside the species. It is off by default; tick it in almost every case. Without it, the species names arrive on the device as orphans: the taxonomy held locally has no genus, family or order to attach them to, so they cannot be browsed by higher taxon and any rollup by group in your own data will not resolve correctly. Leave it off only if storage is genuinely tight and you intend to work entirely at species level with no hierarchical browsing.

Downloading taxa to the device

Nothing is pre-loaded onto the device for any particular site. The GBIF query populates the local taxonomy with GBIF Backbone names known to occur nearby, so when you record an observation you are picking from taxa that have actually been found at the site, rather than searching the full global list — and those names stay on the device once they are downloaded.

1. Set the Detail level to the rank that matches your recording needs. Species is the default.
2. Tap Get data to load the tree for your position.
3. Tap a phylum to expand it, then expand further to the class or order you want.
4. Tick the checkbox next to each group you will record. You can tick at any rank — ticking a class downloads all its constituent taxa down to the detail level you set.
5. Tick Also download parent taxa unless storage is genuinely tight.
6. Tap Download N selected. The app fetches the ticked taxa from GBIF and writes them to the local database in the background; a notification shows progress and you can close the sheet meanwhile.
7. Tap Done to close the sheet.

The downloaded names are then searchable offline when you enter observations in Recording observations. You are picking from names known to occur locally rather than typing from memory against the full global taxonomy.

Using it to plan a survey

Before a field season, run the query over your intended site and read the phylum-level counts before downloading anything. The distribution of counts tells you which groups are well represented in the published record for that area and which are barely present.

A phylum with a handful of taxa is either genuinely absent from the site or under-surveyed and under-published there. Both cases are useful to know before a trip: genuine absence tells you where not to spend effort, and a thin published record for a group you expect to be present identifies a gap you can target.

Download taxa only for the groups you will actively record on a given trip. There is no benefit to loading the full tree onto the device if you are working on a single phylum; the download takes time and connection bandwidth you may not have.

Limits

The query requires a live connection to the GBIF API. It cannot run offline, which is why the intended workflow is to run it before you leave a connected location.

The search radius is 20 km around your current position. This is fixed by the query; there is no radius control in the app.

The counts reflect what has been published to GBIF. Coverage is uneven between regions and between taxonomic groups: vertebrates in western Europe are typically well represented; invertebrates and fungi in central Asia are not. A low count is a statement about the published record for that combination of group and location, not a direct statement about the site. Interpret the figures with that in mind.

There is no publishing from the app to GBIF. The integration is read-only: you query existing records and download taxon names. To contribute your own data to GBIF you export a Darwin Core Archive or GBIF DwC-DP file from the app and submit it through the standard GBIF route — see Export formats for the file formats available.