Wednesday What’s New: International Year of Biodiversity

Written by Heleigh Bostwick    Wednesday, 26 May 2010

Did you know that 1.25 million organisms around the world have been catalogued? Neither did I until the other day when I saw this news item in Science Daily. That’s right, the Catalogue of Life Special 2010 Edition is the definitive list of species on the planet. The Catalogue of Life Special 2010 Edition has been released as the joint project of Species 2000 and ITIS to commemorate the International Year of Biodiversity. Published by published by arrangement with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, the “Catalogue of Life” lists 1,257,735 species of plants, animals, fungi and micro-organisms, including for example 5,747 species of dragonflies and damselflies alone. Species 2000 is a non-profit federation of federation of taxonomic database custodians whose purpose is to collate a uniform and validated index to the world's known species. It is, The Integrated Taxonomic Information System, is a partnership of federal agencies and other organizations from the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The DVD-ROM version of the catalogue made its debut on May 19, 2010 at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. The catalogue is found online at www.catalogueoflife.org and is a free electronic resource available to the public, researchers, scientists, and anyone else with an interest in species around the globe.