Earthworm species, a searchable database

Abstract

The first earthworm species named was Lumbricus terrestris Linnaeus, 1758. Since then, there were some 6000earthworm (Oligochaeta: Megadrili) species names described, from which ca. 3000–3500 are valid. In order to help the orientation in such a huge amount of data a web-based database was created. Each record contains the basic data of the species names described; i.e. family, genus, specific epithet, author, year, reference to the original description and optionally the valid combination of the species name and deposition of type specimens. The database is searchable by every field mentioned and the resulted list can be arranged alphabetically.

Keywords

• Oligochaeta
• Megadrili
• earthworms
• species database