Last Thursday (14 April 2016) the WoRCS initiative was presented by the thematic editors Vasilis Gerovasileiou and Nicolas Bailly to the Catalogue of Life Symposium 2016 “Management of taxonomic names: From global to local species lists; From local to global species lists” that was held in the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR), Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
About 35 colleagues attended the symposium, Leen Vandepitte (WoRMS programme Manager) among them. Data mining from old publications on cave biota by the editors of WoRCS has already revealed a significant number of synonyms for several species as well as cave-exclusive species that had been overlooked from global species databases. In these cases, the WoRCS thematic editors, who manage the cave-related information, collaborate with the taxonomic editors of WoRMS, who manage the taxonomic content of Aphia to complete the list of synonyms.
Eventually, this will help to complete the
Catalogue of Life, as WoRMS is now the main provider for marine groups, in the framework of an ongoing collaboration with ITIS (Integrated Taxonomic Information System).