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 catalogue and list of names of

marine organism Marine life, sea life or ocean life is the collective ecological communities that encompass all aquatic animals, aquatic plant, plants, algae, marine fungi, fungi, marine protists, protists, single-celled marine microorganisms, microorganisms ...

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 science, scientific study of naming, defining (Circumscription (taxonomy), circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxon, taxa (si ...

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 A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are a ...

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 2007 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 union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

and hosted by the

Flanders Marine Institute The Flanders Marine Institute (Dutch: Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee, VLIZ) is a scientific institution dedicated to marine research. Established in 1999 and headquartered in Ostend, Flanders, VLIZ gathers and disseminates ocean knowledge, promote ...

(VLIZ) in

Ostend Ostend ( ; ; ; ) is a coastal city and municipality in the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It comprises the boroughs of Mariakerke, Raversijde, Stene and Zandvoorde, and the city of Ostend proper – the la ...

, 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 th ...

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 aggregates content to form "pages" for every known species. Content is compiled from existing trusted ...

. 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 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. The census cost US$650 milli ...

was completed. , WoRMS contained listings for 514,088 marine species names (including synonyms) of which 247,418 are valid marine species (98% checked). Their goal was 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 The Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera (IRMNG) is a taxonomic database which attempts to cover published genus names for all domains of life (also including subgenera in zoology), from 1758 in zoology (1753 in botany) up to the pre ...

(IRMNG), using a common infrastructure. In 2021, a genus of extinct

sea snails Sea snails are slow-moving marine gastropod molluscs, usually with visible external shells, such as whelk or abalone. They share the taxonomic class Gastropoda with slugs, which are distinguished from snails primarily by the absence of a visibl ...

was named after the WoRMS database: '' Wormsina'' Harzhauser & Landau, 2021.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:World Register Of Marine Species Animal taxonomy Biogeography Fisheries databases Marine biology Online taxonomy databases Zoology 2008 establishments

Content

History

See also

References

External links