Description
The South African National Species Checklist (Catalogue of Life in South Africa, COLSA) is the authoritative checklist of South Africa’s species and biodiversity. In the current version, 99254 accepted names with 37144 synonyms, and South African vernaculars are included in the data package. The current 2025 version is composed of three key datasets, including the South African National Plant Checklist, the South African National Animal Checklist, and the List of Alien Species in South Africa (2025). This consolidated and authoritative list of species is presented in a manner that is tidy and FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) and will be maintained and expanded as additional species lists become available. Nationally, many institutions throughout South Africa have contributed species lists through SANBI’s managed network of Partners. Here, programmes like the Foundational Biodiversity Information Programme and the SANBI-GBIF Node, has supported the generation and mobilisation of biodiversity data, for its use in scientific research, policy and decision-making. Some museums and research institutions including through Natural Science Collections Facility have also contributed data. The species list of alien taxa in South Africa was developed as part of triennial national status reports on biological invasions and has been coordinated by the Invasives Species Programme at SANBI. This checklist was compiled as an outcome of the Research and Innovation Working Group of the G20, under the South African presidency. This checklist formed part of the deliverables under Priority 2 "Biodiversity Information for Sustainable Development" for GBIF to build a Catalogue of Life (a list of all the world’s species) within the G20 framework.
Data Records
The data in this checklist resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 137,137 records.
1 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
Versions
The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.
How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). 2025. South African National Species Checklist (Catalogue of Life in South Africa, COLSA). Version 1.0. The South African National Biodiversity Institute - Global Biodiversity Information Facility (SANBI-GBIF). Checklist dataset.
Rights
Researchers should respect the following rights statement:
The publisher and rights holder of this work is South African National Biodiversity Institute. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 668282c7-8d71-4c2b-b9ba-f9ab705c88d5. South African National Biodiversity Institute publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by South African Biodiversity Information Facility.
Keywords
Checklist; South Africa; Bryophyta; Marchantiophyta; Anthocerotophyta; Trachyophyta; Lycopodiopsida; Polypodiopsida; Cycadopsida; Pinopsida; Liliopsida; Magnoliopsida. Animal Species; Classification; Distribution; Synonyms; Common Names; References. Alien species; biological invasions; invasive species; invasives; non-native species; species lists.
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Geographic Coverage
South Africa
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-90, -180], North East [90, 180] |
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Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | 668282c7-8d71-4c2b-b9ba-f9ab705c88d5 |
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| https://ipt.sanbi.org.za/resource?r=zanationaltaxon |