Biodata resources form a crucial, large, and globally distributed infrastructure for life science research. However, the organic growth of this ecosystem has made it difficult to quantify key indicators that justify sustainable support, such as overall usage, impact, and interdependencies among resources. Here, we report the update of the Global Biodata Coalition's 2022 inventory of resources and the development of a Total Resource Usage (TRU) dataset that merges the inventory dataset with two complementary datasets from the open scientific literature: data citations and informal resource name mentions detected from full text articles using a fine-tuned machine learning model. A unified database schema enables cross-comparison of usage, dependency network analyses, and an assessment of resource name distinctiveness. Our combined dataset identified 11.5 million formal and informal references, and our comparison of different ways in which resources are acknowledged reveals that most resources are referenced informally within article text. Network analysis confirms a densely interconnected system in which Global Core Biodata Resources consistently act as net providers and major network integrators, underscoring their foundational role. Furthermore, while most resource full names are highly distinctive, more convenient acronyms are commonly used, which hampers the detectability of resource use via text mining. These results provide tangible evidence of a highly-used, interconnected global biodata infrastructure, despite suboptimal citation practices. The observed diversity in referencing modes highlights the critical need for more consistent practices to ensure biodata resources are appropriately and traceably acknowledged in the scientific literature.