The variety of birds worldwide can be appreciated by the example of an ornately colored Lichtenstein’s Sandgrouse (photo by Luke Seitz).

The main goal of AviList has been to combine the independent taxonomy lists for birds. In response, a new list of the world's bird species was released last week, with the official global bird total listed at 11,131 species. AviList is a multi-year effort to combine the previous taxonomic bird species lists into a single list that all parties agreed to thereby combining the previous primary world bird lists used: The American Ornithological Society Checklist and the eBird-Clements Checklist, the IOC (International Ornithological Congress) World Bird List, and the BirdLife International List. Future revisions are planned to be released once a year hereafter.

AviList is a collaborative global effort to produce a single taxonomy source for the birds of the world, along with key information about bird species taxonomy and nomenclature. The checklist is Free to download by anyone – birders, ornithologists, other biologists, conservation practitioners, administrators, legislators, and any other stakeholders in bird classification to ensure we are all speaking the same language regarding bird names and species information worldwide.

This cooperative work encompassed years of interactions to standardize and finalize taxonomy and nomenclature organized by the AviList team. Bibliographic information was combined with the taxonomic information, and expert reviewers were enlisted to review and suggest edits of the final product.

As AviList worked toward its first release, the coordination between existing partner lists has been among the most important aspects of the AviList efforts. The main goal of AviList – to reduce the number of independent taxonomies for birds and to make existing ones more interoperable – has been achieved, and the first version of AviList has now been published. To refer to the full announcement, see About AviList – AviList: The Global Avian Checklist and to view the entire list, refer to AviList unites the world’s bird species - BirdLife International