February 13, 2025 / by Olaf Bánki

Monthly Release February 2025

Permanent identifier: https://doi.org/10.48580/dgnfb

Catalogue of Life (COL) is an assembly of expert-based global species checklists with the aim to build a comprehensive catalogue of all known species of organisms on Earth. As a global consortium, we aim to address the needs of researchers, policy-makers, environmental managers and the wider public for a consistent and up-to-date listing of all the world’s known species. We are happy to announce that we have just published the Catalogue of Life February 2025 online!

The Catalogue of Life contains about 2,2 million accepted species. About 2,05 million are living species, and the rest are extinct. A large community of taxonomists, over 500 experts globally, representing 167 data sources is underpinning this global species list. Although the COL aspires to cover all described extant species, there are still deficiencies for particular taxonomic groups.

A detailed list of source changes can be found in ChecklistBank where you can also view changes between other releases. A change log of the Catalogue of Life monthly releases can be found on the COL public portal.

A highlighted change in the February COL version is the inclusion of LPSN. LPSN, List of Prokaryotic names with Standing in Nomenclature, is like Catalogue of Life a Global Core Biodata Resource. Given the new updates from LPSN, the biological classification in Catalogue of Life is changed into three domains: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota.

Another noteworthy change is the inclusion of Háva’s Catalogue of Selected Coleoptera families. In the February version taxa from the family Derodontidae are added to the Catalogue of Life.