April 10, 2025 / by Olaf Bánki
Monthly Release April 2025
Permanent identifier: https://doi.org/10.48580/dgplc
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 April 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 April COL version are:
- 93 Checklists have been updated
- ITIS phylum Cyanobacteriota was brought back over LPSN data.
- Sepidiini tribe ver. 22, 2019-04 was re-synced
