XPath and Biology

For given species, find others in same genus

• Find genus, then species

  //genus[species/@name='Lama guanicoe']/species

• Find species with parent genus

  //species[parent::genus/species/@name = 'Lama guanicoe']

• Find siblings, and self

  //species[@name = 'Lama guanicoe']/preceding-sibling::species
/taxonomy//species[@name = 'Lama guanicoe']
/taxonomy//species[@name = 'Lama guanicoe']/following-sibling::species

Tree 'pruned' to a specific species

Approach: select only those parts of the tree that have the species as a descendant

• life_taxonomy.xml
• /taxonomy//*[descendant-or-self::species/@name='Giraffa cameloparadalis']

Flattening the Hierchary

To retain the hierarchy, we'll need to use XSLT with XPath!