Background Information

ChecklistBank is a core infrastructure of the Catalogue of Life (COL) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). It has been co-developed and is governed jointly by COL and GBIF. It was launched in December 2020 after an extensive roadmap development phase prior to the start of the BiCIKL project. During the BiCIKL project, enhancements were made to ChecklistBank regarding the expansion of data pipelines and the development of tooling for users to map and harmonise taxonomic datasets to one another.

ChecklistBank is a publishing platform and repository focused on taxonomic checklist and nomenclatural datasets, including TreatmentBank datasets, classifications, species hypotheses, (M)OTUs, and BINs from sources such as Barcode of Life, NCBI Taxonomy/ENA, and UNITE/PlutoF. Data and tooling are also used to create custom taxonomic data products by COL and GBIF.

Context of Use of the Service

All information related to a biological species is tied to its name. Combining information from different sources about a species is impossible without the unification of taxonomic names across various information sources. ChecklistBank offers access to authoritative taxonomic information and provides avenues for harmonizing this information.

It provides open access to taxonomic, nomenclatural, and species checklist datasets, as well as mapping and harmonization tools and species list-building functionalities for authoritative taxonomic products, such as the Catalogue of Life Checklist.

The Need

ChecklistBank responds to the following needs:

  • Provides an open data platform for publishing and sharing taxonomic checklist data, nomenclatural datasets, and policy-relevant species and taxon datasets (including TreatmentBank datasets, classifications, species hypotheses, (M)OTUs, and BINs from Barcode of Life, NCBI Taxonomy/ENA, UNITE/PlutoF, among others).
  • Offers a standardised interpretation of data, facilitating the unification, comparison, and harmonisation of taxonomic datasets.
  • Allows all datasets to be searched, browsed, downloaded, or accessed programmatically via the ChecklistBank API.
  • Provides data and tooling used to create custom taxonomic data products by COL and GBIF, such as the Catalogue of Life Checklist.
  • Is open for external users to add data and use the platform.

Added Value

Having a global service for unifying and harmonizing taxonomic names is a highly cost-efficient activity not only for the scientific community, but also for policymakers, nations, multilateral policy initiatives, data infrastructures, and experts involved in nature conservation and management.

Competitive Advantage

ChecklistBank is the single global open data repository covering all life on earth with a focus on publishing and sharing taxonomic checklist data, nomenclatural datasets, and other species/taxon-related data in existence to date. It is a collaborative effort supporting the vision that major biodiversity data initiatives and infrastructures should revolve around a common and shared taxonomic service.

A Qualitative Upgrade on the Current Use of Biodiversity Data

A common problem for users of biodiversity data is combining data from different sources (such as literature, DNA sequences, natural history collections, and species occurrences) while remaining confident that the information relates to the same biological group of organisms. ChecklistBank, along with its authoritative taxonomic data products like the Catalogue of Life Checklist, provides a global quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) mechanism for species checklist building. Such a QA/QC mechanism is a fundamental function required to gain trust in scientific data and results.

Exemplary Use of the Service

The ChecklistBank tutorial provides exercises to explore these tools:

  1. Explore the ChecklistBank repository: Search, inspect, and download checklists.
  2. Cross-dataset search tool: Look up the appearance of a particular scientific name across all data sources available in ChecklistBank.