WoRMS Users: Video Tutorials
Section outline
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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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These WoRMS user tutorial videos are aimed at all the users of WoRMS. You do not need a log in for the database.
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This user tutorial explains how to match your taxon list to WoRMS using the taxon match tool.
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This user tutorial illustrates how to search taxa in WoRMS through the Taxa module. It includes three parts that demonstrate the quick search, the simple search and the advanced search.
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This user tutorial describes how to search for literature in WoRMS through the Literature module, and how to request the PDF of a source in WoRMS (if available).
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This user tutorial presents how to search for specimens in WoRMS through the Specimen module.
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A short user tutorial on how to search distributions in WoRMS through the Distribution module.
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The user tutorial describes how to add images and videos to the WoRMS Photogallery, with and without a login.
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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.
