Foraminifera in the World Register of Marine Species (Worms) Taxonomic Database

Abstract

Most foraminiferal research is founded on sound taxonomy. To clearly communicate such research, similar species concepts and consistent use of names is desirable. As a contribution to this larger goal, the World Foraminifera Database (http://www.marinespecies.org/foraminifera) was set up in 2010 as a subset within the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS). The purpose is to provide an authoritative, open-access inventory of all foraminiferal taxonomic names. The inventory is almost complete for both fossil and Recent foraminiferal taxa, containing 4932 generic and 55,884 species (including infraspecies) names. There are ∼61,000 genus-species combinations of which ∼54,600 are currently “accepted” species and infraspecies (with 9600 extant). Associated data includes 14,700 linked foraminiferal literature sources, ∼6600 images, and species-level links to many other databases and images, such as the Cushman Collection (Smithsonian Institution), American Museum of Natural History, Mikrotax (planktic foraminifera), GenBank, and Zootaxon. The WoRMS database is owned by the global taxonomic community and hosted and serviced by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), Belgium. We recommend that all researchers working with foraminifera both use and contribute to the World Foraminifera Database, as that will improve the accuracy of the database's content and save investigators many hours of searching elsewhere.