The Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) is a partnership among federal agencies that is funded in part by the USGS Biological Informatics Program. It addresses the challenges inherent in providing biological data and information from a variety of sources. One of the major challenges in the biological and bioinformatics communities has been the lack of ready access to standardized information on the names and taxonomy of organisms. While there are international codes of nomenclature for naming organisms, changing species concepts and classification have led to the relatively common situation in which the same species may be referred to by different names. ITIS is fast becoming the standard for nomenclature used by other databases and researchers including those working with different species of pollinator.

A World Bees Checklist
Together with specialists around the world, the ITIS, has completed a checklist of the 19,436 named bee species of the world. The entire checklist (with some synonyms and subspecies) is fully integrated into the ITIS database and can be accessed online at http://www.itis.gov/beechecklist.html.

" The bee checklist acts as a taxonomic 'Rosetta Stone' that will enhance communication, information exchange and data repatriation about bees. The completed checklist is a first step in modeling and forecasting future population trends ," Mike Ruggiero, (formerly) ITIS.