Thalasseus elegans
Elegant Tern
i
2026-08-06: worms_id 413043 via WoRMS TSN crosswalk (status accepted) 2026-08-05: worms_id 413043 via WoRMS TSN crosswalk (status accepted); WoRMS Sterna elegans unaccepted -> Thalasseus elegans; itis:176925 deprecated in ITIS -> itis:176931 (Thalasseus elegans)
The elegant tern is a tern in the family Laridae. It breeds on the Pacific coast of southern California in the United States and western Mexico, and migrates south to Peru, Ecuador and Chile for the northern winter; in the late summer and fall, some also disperse north to Oregon and more rarely Washington.W CalCOFI holds 770 observations of it in 1 dataset between 1988 and 2022.R
- 770
- observations
- 770
- records
- 770
- sampling events
- 1988–2022
- years
- 1
- datasets
- 43 cm
- max length
Observed in 1 dataseti
One row per dataset, and beside it one cell per year, darker with more observations — the same
strip the front door draws per dataset. Each row ends with the name that dataset uses
(dataset_taxon); the accepted name is written once, in the title above. A quiet
pill marks a name the authority does not accept.
i
One row per dataset, and beside it one cell per year, darker with more observations — the same strip the front door draws per dataset. Each row ends with the name that dataset uses (dataset_taxon); the accepted name is written once, in the title above. A quiet pill marks a name the authority does not accept.
-
name used: Thalasseus elegans Elegant Tern · code
ELTEre-keyed
Ways inExplorerdb-queryERDDAPRPythonThis page as JSON
Code and endpoints ERDDAP · R · Python · JSON
library(calcofi4r) con <- cc_get_db() # the promoted release tbl(con, "obs_bio") |> filter(taxon_key == "itis:176931")
import calcofi4py as cc
con = cc.cc_get_db()
con.sql("SELECT * FROM obs_bio WHERE taxon_key = 'itis:176931'").df()Read from taxa.json of release v2026.10.21, written at release by calcofi4db::build_taxa_catalog(). The catalog's index is /species/.
How big is it 43 cm max
Every mark is a measured length with its own source — hover one to read it. The reference objects are _data/size_reference.csv: two of them, the 505 µm bongo mesh and the net's ring, are CalCOFI's own sampling gear.
Lineage 11 ranks · Animalia to Thalasseus
Credits silhouette · photo · text · length
- Silhouette · T. Michael Keesey · CC BY-SA 3.0 · PhyloPic, drawn from Thalasseus bergii · source
- Photo · velodrome · CC BY 4.0 · commons · source
- Text · Wikipedia, “Elegant tern” · CC BY-SA 4.0 · revision 1322936937
- Length · sealifebase
Elsewhere Wikidata · iNaturalist · GBIF · eBird
The same organism on the services the faces were fetched from; the authorities' own pages are the ids in the head.
Cite the release, v2026.10.21
Cite the release, v2026.10.21; each dataset's own citation, licence and DOI are on its page. How to cite ↗