Catalogue of Life

Search 2.5 million species in the world’s most comprehensive taxonomic checklist. Maps, images, and feedback to curators included.

Catalogue of Life is the most comprehensive and authoritative global index of species. It combines hundreds of taxonomic sources into a single unified checklist of every named living and recently extinct organism — 2.5 million+ accepted species, 7 million+ scientific names. This app brings the full Catalogue of Life to your iPhone.

WHAT YOU CAN DO • Search scientific and vernacular names across the entire catalogue • Browse the tree of life from kingdom down to species and below • Drill into a taxon to see classification, synonymy, common names, source, type material, etymology, and remarks • Bookmark favorites and revisit recently viewed taxa • See worldwide occurrence maps powered by GBIF • Browse occurrence images contributed by iNaturalist and other observers • Submit data corrections — feedback becomes a public GitHub issue read by curators • Switch between the latest release and any of the past five annual COL releases • Filter searches by rank, status, and taxonomic group

WHO IT'S FOR Biologists, taxonomists, naturalists, students, citizen scientists, museum staff — anyone who needs an authoritative answer to "what's the accepted name of this organism, and what's known about it?"

ABOUT CATALOGUE OF LIFE The Catalogue of Life is published by the Catalogue of Life Foundation in Amsterdam and is the taxonomic backbone of GBIF, the Encyclopedia of Life, and many other biodiversity infrastructures. Data is contributed by 200+ specialist databases worldwide and curated by a global community of taxonomic experts.

NO ACCOUNTS, NO ADS, NO TRACKING No sign-in. No advertising. No analytics. No third-party SDKs. The app fetches public taxonomic data over HTTPS and stores your bookmarks and preferences locally on your device. See our privacy policy for details.