Mark has been involved in species databases development since he led the European Register of Marine Species from 1999. VLIZ became the host of ERMS. Mark wrote the data management component of MarBEF with VLIZ which led to its development and the platform to build WoRMS. He has been involved in Species 2000 (Team member) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (Vice chair Science Committee) and was the first Chair of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) until 2008. WoRMS has become widely used as the most scholarly source of information on marine species. The growth of WoRMS, both in the number of people involved and complexity of content, is posing new challenges in management, cooperation and presentation of the content. However, this increases the usefulness and importance of WoRMS to the scientific community. The role of the SC is critical as it represents the Editorial Board which holds the Intellectual Property Rights to the WoRMS database content and must lead its development. On the SC, Mark would encourage greater engagement of the SC with editors and a participatory, patient, consensus building approach to WoRMS development.

Taxonomic term: Amphipoda [WoRMS]