WoRMS Editors: Instructions Tutorials
Section outline
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Keeping WoRMS up-to-date is a continuous process. New information is entered daily by the taxonomic editors and by the members of our data management team. Often data also come in from contributions of large datasets, such as global or regional species lists.
The content of WoRMS is controlled by taxonomic and thematic experts, not by database managers. WoRMS has an editorial management system where each taxonomic group is represented by an expert who has the authority over the content, and is responsible for controlling the quality of the information. Each of these main taxonomic editors can invite several specialists of smaller groups within their area of responsibility to join them.
The Aphia platform is an infrastructure designed to capture taxonomic and related data and information, and includes an online editing environment. It is the core platform that underpins the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and all its related global, regional and thematic species databases, but it also allows the storage of non-marine data.
Content-wise, the Aphia structure can roughly be divided into 10 modules: taxonomy, distribution, traits, specimen information, vernacular names, notes, links, images, identification keys and sources.
This resource is aimed at taxonomic editors and thematic experts and includes a series of video tutorials, ordered following the 10 modules mentioned above, that illustrate how to perform the most common editing activities in the system, both on the technical and content side of the database.
Find the editing issue you are looking for in the modules below and click on the link to watch the video tutorial.
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The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) aims at providing an authoritative and comprehensive list of names of marine organisms, including information on synonymy. While the highest priority goes to valid names, other names in use are included so that this register can serve as a guide to interpret taxonomic literature.
This register of marine species grew out of the European Register of Marine Species (ERMS), and its combination with several other species registers maintained at the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ). Rather than building separate registers for all projects, and to make sure taxonomy used in these different projects is consistent, VLIZ developed a consolidated database called ‘Aphia’. Aphia contains valid species names, synonyms and vernacular names, and extra information such as literature and biogeographic data. Besides species names, Aphia also contains the higher classification in which each scientific name is linked to its parent taxon. The classification used is a ‘compromise’ between established systems and recent changes. Its aim is to aid data management, rather than suggest any taxonomic or phylogenetic opinion on species relationships. MarineSpecies.org is the web interface for the marine taxa available in this Aphia database.
WoRMS combines information from Aphia with other authoritative marine species lists which are maintained by others (e.g. AlgaeBase, FishBase), the so-called 'externally hosted and managed species databases'.
This register, which is hosted by VLIZ, a member of LifeWatch Belgium, has received endorsement by the Ocean Decade as a ‘Project Action’. In early October 2021, the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (‘Ocean Decade’), endorsed 94 new Decade Actions across all ocean basins, all of them contributing in some way to the central vision of “the science we need for the ocean we want”.
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No database of this size is without errors and omissions. We can’t promise to make no errors, but we do promise to follow up and give feedback on any communications pointing out errors. Feedback is very welcome!
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This resource was developed by LifeWatch Belgium.
