Taxonomic databases should reflect,and not substitute,published scientific literature and community consensus:some observations on WoRMS and barnacles

The World Register of Marine Species(WoRMS)is a well-known biodiversity information system,designed as a global open-access inventory of the names of marine taxa,whose website1 and databases are developed and hosted by the Flanders Marine Institute(Ostend,Belgium).Established in 2007,WoRMS has been growing in both content and popularity ever since(Costello et al.2013).The aim of WoRMS is to provide an authoritative and comprehensive list of names of marine organisms arranged in the most up-to-date and stable hierarchy as determined by the appropriate editor(Horton et al.2017).