March 12, 2025 / by Olaf Bánki
Monthly Release March 2025
Permanent identifier: https://doi.org/10.48580/dgnxm
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 March 2025 online!
The Catalogue of Life contains about 2,2 million accepted species. About 2,06 million are living species, and the rest are extinct. A large community of taxonomists, over 500 experts globally, representing 168 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.
Highlighted changes in the March COL version are:
- 88 Checklists have been updated
- WoRMS Mysidacea: World List of Lophogastrida, Stygiomysida and Mysida replaced order Mysida from ITIS and added new global checklists for crustacean orders Stygiomysida and †Pygocephalomorpha
- World Spider Catalog was newly imported via API
- Systema Dipterorum ver. 5.6 of Dec 2024 and ReptileDB of Mar 2024 were re-synced.
