AlgaeBase

AlgaeBase is a database of species including information about all the groups of algae as well as the seagrasses.

History
AlgaeBase was created March 20, 1996 by Michael D. Guiry, named Michael Guiry's seaweed website at the time. It has now grown into a database of algae from around the world, including information about freshwater, terrestrial, brackish, and marine algae. By 2005, AlgaeBase contained about 65,000 names, and by September 2006, 122,240 specific and infraspecific names were in the database, along with 5,826 images, 38,290 bibliographic items, and 138,706 distributional records. Currently, data for marine algae, mainly the seaweeds, are the most complete. About 30,000 species of algae are included, of which the Rhodophyta (6000 species), marine Chlorophyta (1500 species), and Phaeophyceae (1755 species) are the most complete. The diatoms and smaller freshwater algae, as of August 2010, are the most incomplete groups.

The programming of the site is carried out by VisualID (http://www.visualid.com) by Pier Kuipers and Caoilte Guiry, and the compilation of the data was funded by the Irish Government Department of Education and Science's PRTLI 3 and 4 programmes (http://www.hea.ie/en/prtli).