New taxon ranks

Development API
1

In the response to this request https://eol.org/api/hierarchy_entries/1.0/6985636.json

curl https://eol.org/api/hierarchy_entries/1.0/6985636.json | jq '.ancestors[].taxonRank'

"clade"
"clade"
"domain"
"clade"
"kingdom"
"clade"
"clade"
"phylum"
"subphylum"
"clade"
"clade"
"superclass"
"class"
"subclass"
"infraclass"
"megacohort"
"supercohort"
"cohort"
"subcohort"
"order"
"family"
"subfamily"
"genus"

there’s some new rank names in there I’ve not seen anywhere else:

  • clade
  • cohort
  • megacohort
  • supercohort
  • subcohort

I don’t remember seeing these before the API shake up. Is “clade” used similarly to “no rank” as NCBI does in their classifications? What do the various “cohort” ranks refer to?

2

Yes, like “no rank” the “clade” value is technically an abuse of the taxonRank field because it is not a Linnean rank. Cohorts are rarely used ranks that are part of the Linnean hierarchy. They are situated below the class level and above the ordinal level. The hierarchy of cohort ranks goes like this:

megacohort
supercohort
cohort
subcohort
infracohort

Also see: Taxonomic rank - Wikipedia

1 Like
3

thanks @schulzk for the feedback on this. i’ll update my reference rank lookup table