Hi Steve

I'm not aware of any formal agreement between us and I certainly haven't sent updates to PESI but, like most of these taxonomic databases, I'm sure we all try to take the best bits from a wide range of data sources to combine and interpret them with local sensibilities in mind. I have used their taxonomy to check for authorities and current synonymy but I also use GBIF, Plant List, WoRMS and IndexFungorum (plus others) when I am doing my research. I know the NBNG has fed data to GBIF and the NHM also feeds to GBIF so it might be that we move closer to GBIF in the future.

My own feeling is that I would like the UKSI to have its own identity and feel - reflecting a British slant on taxonomy and not just accepting world views. However, I would like any online platform that we develop for the UKSI to present links to the appropriate world catalogues so that a reader can see how we view a group vs how other catalogues view it. Then we could have the best of both worlds, I think. I played around with web-services a while ago and built a framework to run nightly updates and checks on the other catalogues but it created more issues than I could cope with - mainly technical ones, with other catalogues complaining that I was hitting them with too many requests! ;)

Chris R.