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The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) is a
taxonomic database A taxonomic database is a database created to hold information on biological taxa – for example groups of organisms organized by species name or other taxonomic identifier – for efficient data management and information retrieval. Taxonomic dat ...
that aims to provide an authoritative and comprehensive list of names of marine organisms.


Content

The content of the registry is edited and maintained by scientific specialists on each group of organism. These
taxonomist In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are give ...
s control the quality of the information, which is gathered from the primary scientific literature as well as from some external regional and taxon-specific databases. WoRMS maintains valid names of all marine organisms, but also provides information on synonyms and invalid names. It is an ongoing task to maintain the registry, since new species are constantly being discovered and described by scientists; in addition, the nomenclature and taxonomy of existing species is often corrected or changed as new research is constantly being published. Subsets of WoRMS content are made available, and can have separate badging and their own home/launch pages, as "subregisters", such as the ''World List of Marine Acanthocephala'', ''World List of Actiniaria'', ''World Amphipoda Database'', ''World Porifera Database'', and so on. As of December 2018 there were 60 such taxonomic subregisters, including a number presently under construction. A second category of subregisters comprises regional species databases such as the ''African Register of Marine Species'', ''Belgian Register of Marine Species'', etc., while a third comprises thematic subsets such as the ''World Register of Deep-Sea species (WoRDSS)'', ''World Register of Introduced Marine Species (WRiMS)'', etc. In all of these cases, the base data are entered and held once only as part of the WoRMS data system for ease of maintenance and data consistency, and are redisplayed as needed in the context of the relevant subregister or subregisters to which they may also belong. Certain subregisters expand content beyond the original "marine" concept of WoRMS by including freshwater or terrestrial taxa for completeness in their designated area of interest; such records can be excluded from a standard search of WoRMS by selecting appropriate options in the online search interface.


History

WoRMS was founded in 2008 and grew out of the European Register of Marine Species and the UNESCO-IOC Register of Marine Organisms (URMO), which was compiled by Jacob van der Land (and several colleagues) at the National Museum of Natural History, Leiden. It is primarily funded by the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
and hosted by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) in Ostend, Belgium. WoRMS has established formal agreements with several other biodiversity projects, including the
Global Biodiversity Information Facility The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international organisation that focuses on making scientific data on biodiversity available via the Internet using web services. The data are provided by many institutions from around the ...
and the
Encyclopedia of Life The ''Encyclopedia of Life'' (''EOL'') is a free, online encyclopedia intended to document all of the 1.9 million living species known to science. It is compiled from existing trusted databases curated by experts and with the assistance of ...
. In 2008, WoRMS stated that it hoped to have an up-to-date record of all marine species completed by 2010, the year in which the
Census of Marine Life The Census of Marine Life was a 10-year, US $650 million scientific initiative, involving a global network of researchers in more than 80 nations, engaged to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans. Th ...
was completed. As of February 2018, WoRMS contained listings for 480,931 marine species names (including synonyms) of which 240,633 are valid marine species (95 % checked). Their goal is to have a listing for each of the approximately more than 240,000 marine species. VLIZ also hosts the Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera (IRMNG), using a common infrastructure. In 2021, for the first time, a genus was named after this database: '' Wormsina'' Harzhauser & Landau, 2021.MolluscaBase eds. (2021). MolluscaBase. Wormsina Harzhauser & Landau, 2021 †. Accessed through: World Register of Marine Species at: https://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=1514599 on 2021-06-14


World Echinoidea Database

The World Echinoidea Database was listed with the
Global Biodiversity Information Facility The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international organisation that focuses on making scientific data on biodiversity available via the Internet using web services. The data are provided by many institutions from around the ...
on 27 February 2015, but was later rejected.


See also

*
AlgaeBase AlgaeBase is a global species database of information on all groups of algae, both marine and freshwater, as well as sea-grass. History AlgaeBase began in March 1996, founded by Michael Guiry. Text was copied from this source, which is avail ...
*
Catalog of Fishes Catalog of Fishes is a comprehensive on-line database and reference work on the scientific names of fish species and genera. It is global in its scope and is hosted by the California Academy of Sciences. It has been compiled and is continuously u ...
*
Census of Marine Life The Census of Marine Life was a 10-year, US $650 million scientific initiative, involving a global network of researchers in more than 80 nations, engaged to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans. Th ...
(CoML) * Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS)


References


External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:World Register Of Marine Species Animal taxonomy Biogeography Fisheries databases Marine biology Online taxonomy databases Zoology