Reptile Database

The database was founded in 1995 as EMBL Reptile Database[2] when the founder, Peter Uetz, was a graduate student at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany.

[5] As of August 2024, the Reptile Database lists about 12,200 species (including another ~2,200 subspecies) in about 1250 genera (see figure), and has more than 60,000 literature references and about 22,000 photos.

The database has constantly grown since its inception with an average of 100 to 200 new species described per year over the preceding decade.

[6] Recently, the database also added a more or less complete list of primary type specimens.

The Reptile Database also collaborates with the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), the citizen science project iNaturalist,[9] and has links to the IUCN Redlist database.

Number of reptile genera with a given number of species. Most genera have only one or a few species but a few may have hundreds. Based on data from the Reptile Database (as of May 2015).