World Register of Marine Species - WoRMS

The new World Register of Marine Species (www.marinespecies.org) contains about 122,500 validated marine species names (experts having recognized and tidied up some 56,400 aliases - 32% of all names reviewed). It also contains some 5,600 images, hyperlinks to taxonomic literature and other information.

Marking the World Register's official inauguration, some 55 researchers from 17 countries met in Belgium to plan its completion by 2010. Leading World Register experts independently estimate that about 230,000 marine species are known to science. They also believe there are three times as many unknown (unnamed) marine species as known, for a grand total on Earth that could surpass 1 million.

This project will improve information vital to researchers investigating fisheries, invasive species, threatened species and marine ecosystem functioning, as well as to educators.  It will eliminate the misinterpretation of names, confusion over Latin spellings, redundancies and a host of other problems that sow confusion and slow scientific progress.

Hosted by the Flanders Marine Institute, Belgium, the World Register has received early funding from several sources, including the EU's MarBEF (Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning) research network and PESI (Pan-European Species-Directories Infrastructures) project, the European Register of Marine Species, Species2000 Europa, CoML's International Census of Marine Microbes project, the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. And it will serve as the taxonomic backbone of another funder - the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), the CoML's (Census of Marine Life) portal to vast information on species, including their global distribution and other data.

The World Register will also contribute to several related global biodiversity enterprises, including the Encyclopedia of Life (creating a webpage for every species), and Species2000 (assembling a list of valid names for the 1.8 million or so known animals, plants, and fungi, both marine and terrestrial).

Please note that this information has expired.