The Italian Taxonomic Backbone: exploiting taxonomic expertise in the country

The role of checklists ranges from documenting biodiversity in an area to supporting conservation and decision-making and stimulating further investigation. Italy has (at least partly) updated checklists for animals, vascular plants, mosses and liverworts and lichens. Thanks to the Joint Research Unit of LifeWatch Italy, several checklists are integrated into an information system aiming at a national taxonomic backbone. The system aims at integrating and standardising the data and providing a unique access point to authoritative checklists curated by Italian taxonomists. The platform has been developed customising DSpace software, which is connected to a database that manages multiple taxonomic data sources. While information for vascular plants and lichens are retrieved via REST API calls in a JSON format and structured and harmonised according to Darwin Core data schema, data on fauna are integrated into the relational database through a Darwin core-structured dataset. The checklists are updated at regular intervals thanks to the contribution from the scientific community. The Italian taxonomic backbone counts about 86000 records and its continuity and sustainability is provided by Italy's long-term commitment to the LifeWatch ERIC. Its reliability, on the other hand, stems largely from the involvement of numerous expert taxonomists in creating and updating the checklist data. This manuscript aims at describing the Italian taxonomic backbone and the role of the scientific community which contributed to its development.