I suspect the feature used to be broader, see this other discussion linked below. That also indicates EOL, which tomy understanding was then fusing its taxonomy under CoL. However, while CoL continues to be supported with regular updates and developments, it looks to me like EOL has been comparatively stagnant for a few years. In various taxa i frequently see “SANBI” or “uBIO” as the source, but i’m unclear if they’re staff creations or by users. I’m hopeful if those were available in past, that they’re not anymore, the former problematic, the latter defunct.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-means-search-external-name-providers/3242
Re the CoL 2012. Thanks Thomas for those links which stem from me, and @sbrushes also saw my context comment in that linked flag above. Just to note, there’s another place on forum with some context discussion but not relevant, also a couple of places where i tried dialog with iNat staff, and i may link to those - but request to update was refused. There was one potential suggestion of the angle to take to move the idea to update that which might be where to go next, but it’s going to need voices from multiple curators.
Anyway, with respect i’d suggest “a bit out of date” is a delicate massive understatement. I’m openly willing to say ‘Absurdly out of Date’.
For context to maybe better explain to iNat staff why i’m saying “absurdly”, i’ve just looked back for overview of the 2012 checklist and it says “contains 1,404,038 species” while the 2025 general release says “includes over 2.2 million extant species” (and 50k added there on the last general update). So, if the outdated CoL 2012 is the essence (or only source), then the difference between what’s available to iNat users for import using the “External name provider” feature and what CoL actually have available is about a million names!
(Side note: Also, raw numbers of names available also says nothing about how the CoL database has also many MANY taxononmic updates (recombinations, synonomies etc) and just general error fixes (misduplications removed, spellings changed etc). Else if simply care about those raw numbers, actually CoL also have an even bigger extended release with many more names, and a recently released expanded development version beyond that)
http://www.catalogueoflife.org/annual-checklist/2012/info/about
vs.