Lookup NCBI taxonomy for species by name

get_species_taxonomy.py

import sys
from Bio import Entrez

def get_taxid(species):
    """to get data from ncbi taxomomy, we need to have the taxid.  we can
    get that by passing the species name to esearch, which will return
    the tax id"""
    species = species.replace(" ", "+").strip()
    search = Entrez.esearch(term = species, db = "taxonomy", retmode = "xml")
    record = Entrez.read(search)
    return record['IdList'][0]

def get_tax_data(taxid):
    """once we have the taxid, we can fetch the record"""
    search = Entrez.efetch(id = taxid, db = "taxonomy", retmode = "xml")
    return Entrez.read(search)

Entrez.email = ""
if not Entrez.email:
    print "you must add your email address"
    sys.exit(2)
taxid = get_tax_id("Erodium carvifolium")
data = get_tax_data(taxid)
lineage = {d['Rank']:d['ScientificName'] for d in 
    data[0]['LineageEx'] if d['Rank'] in ['family', 'order']}