List of biodiversity databases

This is a list of biodiversity databases that are available over the internet. Databases are classified into two main categories: specimen-focused and species-focused. In between these two categories lie nomenclator databases. The distinction between these categories is sometimes somewhat arbitrary and some databases contain information in more than one category.

"Specimen-focused databases" contain data about individual specimens and include: catalogues of vouchered museum specimens (i.e. collections databases), collections of specimen photographs, databases of field-based specimen observations, morphological data or genetic data as well as meta-databases or consortia of databases (for example: HerpNET (amphibian/reptile distributions), GenBank (sequences)).

"Nomenclators" (e.g. ITIS) act as summaries of taxonomic revisions and are in effect a key between specimen-focused and species-focused databases. They do this because taxonomic revisions use specimen data to determine species limits.

"Species-focused databases" – contain information summarised at the level of species. Some species-focused databases attempt to compile comprehensive data about particular species (e.g. FishBase), while others focus on particular species attributes, for example: checklists of species in a given area (e.g. FEOW), or the conservation status of species (e.g. CITES or IUCN Red List). "Other taxon-focused databases" have genera or families as their basic unit.

pecimen-focused databases

*;Ants of the world ( [http://www.antweb.org] ) :information includes: collection details (museum catalogue number, location, collector, date of collection), photographs, higher taxonomy
*;Australian Plant Name Index ( [http://www.anbg.gov.au/cpbr/databases/apni.html] ):information includes: mapped specimen localities (see nomenclator entry for other information available)

Nomenclators

*;ITIS (Integrated Taxonomic Information System) ( [http://www.itis.usda.gov/] ):information includes: taxonomic status, higher taxonomy
*;Australian Plant Name Index ( [http://www.anbg.gov.au/cpbr/databases/apni.html] ):information includes: species names, bibliographic, typification information (see specimen-focused entry for other information available)

pecies-focused databases

*;FishBase ( [http://www.fishbase.org] ):information includes: higher taxonomy, common names, distribution, IUCN Redlist status
*;ARCBC ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) biodiversity information sharing service ( [http://arcbc.org/cgi-bin/abiss.exe/ldnew?ld=sp_search.htm] ):information includes: IUCN status, habitat, regional presence/absence, description, classification
*;FEOW (Freshwater Ecoregions of the World) :information collated by ecoregion includes: species number, species names

Other taxon-focused databases

*;All catfishes species inventory ( [http://silurus.acnatsci.org/] ):information collated by genera includes: estimated numbers of species, taxonomic experts