World Register of Marine Introduced Species (WRIMS)
From the post:
WRIMS – a database of introduced and invasive alien marine species – has officially been released to the public. It includes more than 1,400 marine species worldwide, compiled through the collaboration with international initiatives and study of almost 2,500 publications.
WRIMS lists the known alien marine species worldwide, with an indication of the region in which they are considered to be alien. In addition, the database lists whether a species is reported to have ecological or economic impacts and thus considered invasive in that area. Each piece of information is linked to a source publication or a specialist database, allowing users to retrace the information or get access to the full source for more details.
Users can search for species within specific groups, and generate species lists per geographic region, thereby taking into account their origin (alien or origin unknown or uncertain) and invasiveness (invasive, of concern, uncertain …). For each region the year of introduction or first report has been documented where available. In the past, species have sometimes erroneously been labelled as ‘alien in region X’. This information is also stored in WRIMS, clearly indicating that this was an error. Keeping track of these kinds of errors or misidentifications can greatly help researchers and policy makers in dealing with alien species.
WRIMS is a subset of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS): the taxonomy of the species is managed by the taxonomic editor community of WoRMS, whereas the alien-related information is managed by both the taxonomic editors and the thematic editors within WRIMS. Just like its umbrella-database WoRMS, WRIMS is dynamic: a team of editors is not only keeping track of new reports of alien species, they also scan existing literature and databases to complete the general distribution range of each alien species in WRIMS.
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Are there aliens in your midst? 😉
Exactly the sort of resource that if I don’t capture it now, I will never be able to find it again.
Enjoy!