Checklist Bank is the index of taxonomic catalogues and species checklists published through the GBIF network.

Checklist Bank resources form the basis for building the GBIF taxonomic backbone that is used to organise and present the primary biodiversity data published to the GBIF network.   It has been developed as an integral component of the GBIF data portal as it under goes a revision in 2011.  

A development-version of Checklist Bank is available at ecat-dev.gbif.org.  It includes a draft set of name-services with a documented API.  Checklist Bank web services are already in use supporting a number of tools and services.