Interactive Online Keying

One of the problems with using a traditional dichotomous key such as found in most floras to identify an organism is that it’s easy to get stuck if you can’t determine which choice of the key is correct, especially at the topmost levels of the key. What you really need is an identification tool that lets you enter the characteristics of the specimen you do recognize, and narrows down your choices accordingly.

Such a tool is difficult to create in the pages of a book (though I have seen punch card examples), but is straightforward to build on a computer. At last week’s NBII meeting, I was reminded of the IDnature guides that are being produced at the Discover Life project at the University of Georgia. These are a set of online interactive keys to many different taxa ranging from dung beetles to liverworts. It’s a very promising approach to helping non-experts identify critters.