About the atlas

Clinical pathologists, veterinary technicians, and clinicians who read blood smears have almost no good reference for what normal blood cells look like in exotic, wildlife, and zoo species. The Comparative Blood Cell Atlas is a searchable, taxonomically organized library of blood cell images built to fill that gap.

Every image is attached to a species whose full lineage — kingdom through species — comes from the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, with one exception: birds follow AviList, the global checklist that merged the IOC, Clements and BirdLife lists in 2025 and is the authority ornithologists now work from. So the browser reflects current accepted classification rather than a hand-maintained list. If the species you need is not covered yet, the atlas walks up the lineage and shows you its closest available relatives.

Images record the specimen context that makes them interpretable: health status, stain, sex, age, source, collection date, and how the image was acquired.