The Species 2000 Protocols for a Distributed System

Yuri Roskov
Species 2000, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Reading, UK

Two projects, Species 2000 (federation of global taxonomic databases) and ITIS (North American Integrated Taxonomic Information System), are working together on the Catalogue of Life, a unified taxonomic index of all living species on Earth. The Catalogue of Life is a comprehensive assembly of global and regional species checklists contributed by taxonomists and major institutions around the world. The species index of the Catalogue of Life is a central repository of modern taxonomic species concepts and an up-to-date nomenclature of scientific names. The Catalogue of Life provides an information service for the integration of global biodiversity information around a unified central taxonomic index.

Species 2000 project has introduced simplified and unified standards for the Catalogue of Life based on the different taxonomic practices in various groups of organisms whilst adhering to the basic rules of the different Codes. The document 'Species 2000 Standard Dataset, version 3.2 of December 2004' is available at www.sp2000.org. The standard dataset has described ten field groups related to each species: (1) Accepted Scientific Name linked to References, (2) Synonym(s) linked to Reference(s), (3) Common Name(s) linked to Reference(s), (4) Latest taxonomic scrutiny, (5) Source Database Title, (6) Additional Data/Comments, (7) Family name, (8) Classification above family, and highest taxon in the sector, (9) Distribution data, (10) Reference(s). Each database is invited to supply these data.

The selection of taxonomic databases for the Catalogue of Life is based on an independent and internal peer review process. Peer reviews help us to incorporate valuable and respectable databases and increase the taxonomic quality of the final product.

The Catalogue of Life is released in two forms: Annual and Dynamic checklists. The Annual Checklist is compiled and publishing every year as a single database. It will cover over one million species in 2007. The Annual Checklist is available on-line via www.sp2000.org and on freely distributed CDs. The Dynamic Checklist is an array of online databases linked by the SPICE software. It is accessed by a single user interface via special wrapper programs. It was launched in October 2005 and currently includes approximately half a million species.

Keywords: Catalogue of Life, Index to World Species, Data Standards, Annual and Dynamic Checklists