Balearica: integrating taxonomic, distributional, ecological, and genetic biodiversity data for the Balearic Islands

Advances in technology have increased the publication of biological data, while simultaneously driving the exponential growth in scattered taxonomy, distributional, genetic, and ecological data. Because databases often use different formats, architectures, and standards, data remains fragmented and difficult to integrate, hindering biodiversity research and complicating decision-making for policymakers and governmental agencies. This challenge is especially critical in vulnerable ecosystems such as small and medium-sized islands, which frequently serve as biodiversity hotspots and are subject to intense anthropogenic pressures. The Balearic Islands are a prime example of this situation. Thus, to improve our understanding of the Balearic biodiversity, we developed Balearica . Balearica is a new biodiversity platform designed to consolidate, standardize, and visualize taxonomic, ecological, and genetic information for taxa occurring in the Balearic archipelago. Balearica is built upon BiOS, a modular architecture specifically designed for biodiversity data management, and its taxonomic backbone is validated against Catalogue of Life and structured across ten hierarchical levels. Balearica integrates occurrence from public repositories, literature, and field observations, covering both terrestrial and marine environments with spatial resolution from archipelago to town level. Moreover, it reports the degree of establishment, habitat, ecological system, conservation status, and legal protection information. Finally, Balearica aggregates molecular metadata from NCBI-GenBank and BOLD System. According to estimates provided by regional taxonomic experts, the total number of eukaryotic species occurring in the Balearic Islands ranges between approximately 17,000 and 25,000. The platform currently spans over 16,000 species, already covering a substantial proportion of the archipelago's known eukaryotic biodiversity. As new taxonomic and distributional data become available, this coverage will continue to increase. Balearica aims to provide an evolving and interoperable infrastructure for biodiversity research, decision-making, and monitoring across spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales.