The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) is a database that hopes to provide an authoritative and comprehensive list of names of marine organisms.[1] The content of the registry is edited and maintained by scientific specialists on each group of organism. These taxonomists control the quality of the information, which is gathered from several regional and taxon-specific databases. WoRMS maintains valid names of all marine organisms, but also provides information on synonyms and invalid names. It will be an on-going task to maintain the registry, as new species are constantly being discovered and described by scientists. In addition, the nomenclature of existing species is often found to need correcting.
WoRMS was founded in 2008. It is primarily funded by the European Union and hosted by the Flanders Marine Institute in Ostend, Belgium. WoRMS has established formal agreements with several other biodiversity projects, including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and the Encyclopedia of Life. In 2008, WoRMS stated that it hoped to have an up-to-date record of all marine species completed by 2010, the year in which the Census of Marine Life was completed.[2]
As of November 2011, WoRMS had 212,633 valid marine species, of which 191,155 were checked. Their goal is to capture of all of the estimated 240,000 marine species. There are 27,367 species that are remaining to be added to the database.[3]