October 07, 2025 / by Olaf Banki & Camila Plata

A more comprehensive Catalogue of Life now Live!

We are pleased to announce that a new version of the Catalogue of Life, containing additional information and data sources is now live on our website!

The mission of Catalogue of Life is to forge a global community that manages an authoritative catalogue of species, through an infrastructure that supports open data publishing and use. The Catalogue of Life is currently assembled from around 17500 instead of from 168 data sources originally. These data sources integrate data from global, regional, national, and management checklists, as well as from digitized literature. Through this, the Catalogue of Life is extended with missing scientific names, authorships, references, vernacular names, and some higher classification. Also molecular taxonomic data, such as Barcode Index Numbers and DNA-based Species Hypotheses are included. All this data is geared towards closing global taxonomic data gaps, and improving the usability. The Catalogue of Life is now suited to taxonomically represent the more than 3,5 billion species occurrences mediated through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Throughout 2025, we held several public reviews and, thanks to the valuable feedback received, refined data sources selection and criteria. Many improvements have already been implemented, and further enhancements are underway to make Catalogue of Life more comprehensive, reliable, and user-friendly. We sincerely thank everyone who contributed to this effort so far. We look forward to even broader community participation. Catalogue of Life’s flexible design enables continuous updates and timely responses to any new issues that may arise.

Key website updates

The Catalogue of Life includes information with different gradients of quality. It now comprises two releases. The base release is verified by taxonomic experts specifically for COL. The eXtended Release includes extra data from other sources. The latter is now the default in catalogueoflife.org.

• Browse view: Shows the COL eXtended Release merged names marked with the XR icon. Thus you can identify which names come from vetted sources and which from the additional sources (regional, national, and management checklists among others).

• Search page: You can distinguish and filter between the Base and the eXtended releases.

• Downloads: Choose the release that best fits your needs.

• Source list: Includes the new data providers contributing to the eXtended Release.

• Improved navigation: Updated menu and new informational sections.

Explore the live release here: https://www.catalogueoflife.org/