Dataset Card: WoRMS — World Register of Marine Species
Dataset Card: WoRMS — World Register of Marine Species
Status: draft, awaiting maintainer review. REST docs and no-auth read confirmed against WoRMS documentation on 2026-06-11; confirm the precise license/citation terms before relying on them.
What it is
WoRMS is the authoritative register of marine species names, maintained by a global community of taxonomic editors. It is the backbone that OBIS reconciles its taxonomy against, so a name resolved in WoRMS is the name that aligns occurrence data across sources. The underlying database is Aphia.
Access
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Provider | World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) |
| Docs | REST API, web services overview |
| API base | https://www.marinespecies.org/rest |
| Key endpoints | AphiaRecordsByName/{name}, AphiaIDByName/{name}, AphiaClassificationByAphiaID/{id} |
| Auth | None documented for read access |
| Formats | JSON |
License and reuse
WoRMS content is generally made available under CC-BY 4.0, with a required citation format. Confirm the current terms and cite WoRMS per their requested format on any reuse. Record the exact license string when the connector is promoted to verified.
Fields
AphiaID (the stable WoRMS taxon id), scientificname, authority, status (accepted/unaccepted), rank, valid_name (the accepted name if the queried name is a synonym), and a kingdom→genus classification. The connector returns WoRMS null as an empty result (no match), which callers must handle.
Limitations and ethics
- Taxonomy only — no occurrence or location data, so no coordinate-precision ethics apply.
- Names and statuses change as taxonomy is revised; treat a resolution as "as of" its access date.
How it's used in the commons
The accepted-name authority for species pages and the taxonomy signal for Ocean Intelligence guardians: resolve the accepted name in WoRMS, then query OBIS/GBIF, avoiding synonym mismatches. Connector spec: integrations/worms.md in the Ocean Intelligence System.
Sources (2)
Every claim in this artifact traces to one of the citations below. Anything that could not be sourced was left out.
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