Unfortunately, the consortium that was initiated and led by Vince Smith (Natural History Museum, London) has decided to give up on further developing and updating the Scratchpads, the content management system that has made it possible to run the Macrostomorpha Taxonomy and Phylogeny site since 2007. As of mid July 2024, this site will become static and can thus no longer be updated or changed. For the time being, however, all the information contained in the static site will remain accessible. This is a regrettable development, as it leaves not only this site, but also a large number of other taxonomic sites run the Scratchpads stranded, with no evident follow-up product in sight.
I have known that this change was coming for some time already, and the develoment of the Scratchpands has been minimal for the past several years (with some initially promised core functionality never having been implemented). This state of affairs also explains why I have in recent years not invested much in keeping the site up to date. However, since I own the originally used URL, https://macrostomorpha.info/, I may eventually consider migrating at least some of the functionality to a new site, though no definite plans in this respect exist at the moment.
My reduced time investment in the site also means that the taxonomy that is displayed under the "Macrostomorpha" tab is no longer up-to-date, and can no longer be updated either. For more up-to-date information please consult either the Turbellarian Taxonomic Database maintained by Seth Tyler or the World list of turbellarian worms subregister of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS). These databases are actively being maintained as of mid 2024.
Importantly, all digital reference specimens that were either hosted or intended to be hosted on the Macrostomorpha Taxonomy and Phylogeny site can also be found more permanently on Zenodo, a site that it supported by CERN, and thus backed by more long-term funding.
Happy worming everyone!
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