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.