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About TaiCOL

Catalogue of Life in Taiwan (TaiCOL) is a database that collects and integrates information about species in Taiwan and provides species checklist. It was originally called "Taiwan Biodiversity National Information Network" (TaiBNET). The origin of the database establishment can be traced back to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Article 17 requires the contracting parties to promote the exchange of all publicly available information on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. In order to coordinate with the "Biodiversity Promotion Plan" promulgated by the Taiwan Executive Yuan in 2001, the Ministry of Science and Technology (formerly the National Science Council) commissioned Academia Sinica to integrate Taiwan's biodiversity information and build a database from 2002 to 2004. TaiCOL website was established in 2003 and opened to the public. Since 2006, the project funds have been changed to be supported by the Council of Agriculture, and the list has been continuously revised and gradually expanded with synonyms, Chinese common names, literatures, and native/exotic/conservation attributes and other species-related information, and released species name codes to all domestic large biodiversity databases as data backbones or for data exchange.

Purpose & Mission

Species checklist are important to the conservation of biodiversity resources. To promote the work related to biodiversity conservation, from resource investigation, monitoring, and even policy formulation, the scientific names of species must be correctly cited to ensure effective communication and management. Therefore, the establishment of a updated and accurate species checklist database is the most important and fundamental work to promote biodiversity conservation. In addition, the research and update of species classification is continuous. Currently, the revision and information sources for TaiCOL include: administrator revise based on published literature, invite experts to review taxa, taxonomic experts independently revise on the platform, regularly compare species databases, and user report bugs, etc. This project hopes to continuously update the list of species in Taiwan, to establish a long-term cooperation model with taxonomists in various biological fields, and to provide the latest species information for government departments, researchers, the public and biodiversity databases.