The renewal of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) came timely. Since the signing of the first MoU  in 2009, both systems have evolved tremendously, both in content and available tools and functionalities. The renewed MoU reflects these evolutions and allows both systems to collaborate in more depth and to share available information. EoL recognizes WoRMS as a key provider of data on marine information and will ensure that credit and attribution metadata are displayed for all data derived from WoRMS. This will include links to the respective original WoRMS records, faciliting EOL users to access extra information through the WoRMS portal, where they will have access to the WoRMS tools and services. The same will be done for EOL content shared through WoRMS.

This agreement also contributes to the continued development of the LifeWatch Taxonomic Backbone (LW-TaxBB), that also aims at bringing together taxonomic and species-related data, at filling the gaps in our knowledge and at avoiding duplication of efforts.