WoRMS Philanthropy grants 2022

During 2022, the VLIZ Philanthropy program was able to issue three grants to support WoRMS editors in making WoRMS more complete. This resulted in about 18.000 edits and additions to WoRMS and its sub-registers.

WoRMS press release: Ten remarkable new marine species from 2022

As for previous years, the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) has again released its annual list of the top-ten marine species described by researchers during the past year to coincide with World Taxonomist Appreciation Day on March 19th!

Call for Abstracts: The LifeWatch ERIC BEeS Biodiversity & Ecosystem eScience Conference

Roll up, roll up! Abstracts are now open for the LifeWatch ERIC "BEeS” Biodiversity & Ecosystem eScience Conference “Threats and challenges to biodiversity and ecosystem conservation from an eScience perspective”, which is scheduled to coincide with Biodiversity Day 2023.

3.5 million project aims to solve mysteries about fish migration through main European swimways

A new EU-funded project, STRAITS, will equip all four corners of Europe to track aquatic life in an effort to better understand their biology and ecology, and aid in conservation and management.

LifeWatch collaborates with all-women expedition studying orcas and whales above the Arctic circle

This winter, LifeWatch provided a key contribution to a citizen science initiative studying marine ecosystem change, orca and whale behaviour in northern Norway, 350 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, during the winter herring run.

Our bird tracking data are now archived on GBIF and OBIS!

New open source workflow enables the publication of tracking data from Movebank to GBIF and OBIS.

Explore the traits in WoRMS and Aphia with a brand-new R Shiny application

With this new R Shiny application, you can explore all trait information in the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and its underlying Aphia database in a more advanced way, for instance by combining different traits and combining traits with standardized distributions.

LifeWatch citizen scientists got in-depth training on plastic

SeaWatchers closed the year-end of 2022 in an educational way. They took part in the 'plastic' training which zoomed in on the importance of collecting 'marine litter' data, the optimisation of the current protocol and through which methodology they can also provide data at European level.

Call for nominations for the WoRMS Top-Ten Marine Species of 2022

Once again taxonomists have continued to publish many wonderful new species throughout the last year. As we approach the end of 2022 it is time to think about nominations for The WoRMS Top Ten Marine Species of 2022!

Official launch of AlgaeTraits, a trait database for (European) seaweeds

AlgaeTraits provides standardised trait information for all European seaweeds, enabling the use of trait-based approaches over broad taxonomic, spatial and temporal scales. AlgaeTraits is a thematic subregister of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) which links to AlgaeBase, the most complete database on global algal taxonomic information.