Download complete Phylogenetic Tree as JSON

Question

I would like to integrate the phylogenetic tree into a website. Does anyone know where I can download the complete tree? Best would be a JSON, which looks something like this:

[{
  "level": "domain",
  "name": "eukaryota",
  "commonNames": {
    "en": ["eukaryotes"],
    "de": ["Eukaryoten", "Eukaryonten"]
  },
  "children": [
    {
      "level": "kingdom",
      "name": "plantae",
      "commonNames": {
        "en": ["plants"],
        "de": ["Pflanzen"]
      },
      "children": [...]
    },
    {
      "level": "kingdom",
      "name": "animalia",
      "commonNames": {
        "en": ["animals"],
        "de": ["Tiere"]
      },
      "children": [...]
    },
    ...
  ]
},
{
  "level": "domain",
  "name": "bacteria",
  "commonNames": {
    "en": ["bacteria"],
    "de": ["Bakterien"]
  },
  "children": [...]
}]

Other formats and structures are ok, too. The important thing is that the level of the nodes can be retrieved. In the end I only want to have the main levels Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species in the tree. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_(biology)#/media/File:Biological_classification_L_Pengo_vflip.svg) So if there are more nodes from other levels like Clade, Tribe or Subfamily, it must be possible to identify and remove them. Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

NCBI maintains an SQL dump of their taxonomic database

You can see what that contains here

For smaller requests (depending on what you need), you might also consider the ENSEMBL REST API - although I don't know of a way to retrieve the complete tree (shoot them an email): https://rest.ensembl.org/taxonomy/classification/53399?content-type=application/json

Answer 2

It would be worth looking at the Tree of Life web project, it isn't downloadable but its a reference source that can be improved on and updated in your website.

ToL contains trees linking everything from bacteria, archaea through to the complete diversity of eukaryotes, but its a bit old with 2008 from my taxonomic knowledge being the last update for some of the entries, e.g. Plasmodium spp..