Computer identification keys

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pierrevanstulov, 30.11.2023 0:17

Recently, in some video on YouTube (I think in a lecture by K. Makarov on working with collections), I heard that no one uses text keys with theses and antitheses in parentheses for a long time, and in our computer age everything is entered in special databases, and you can work with it interactively.

For example, you can enter a list of known characteristics into the program, and it will display a list of species with these characteristics. Or you can visualize the key as a tree / table by selecting the desired characteristics.

It sounds logical, but I haven't been able to find any such keys on the Internet yet (maybe I didn't search well). Or are such databases available only in institutes, and ordinary people can't get access to them?

Comments

11.12.2023 20:37, ИНО

Bad search results. The Internet is full of keys, both of the first and second types indicated. However, these are mostly amateur projects, or projects created for use by non-professionals, and therefore operate only with the simplest signs, while at every step explaining where to look, which makes them cumbersome. For a specialist in a specific group, the advantage of such a key is not obvious, and they will understand the classic key as well. But if you look in the wrong group, then interactive keys are still a thing. And I would not say that they exist only for simple groups. For complex ones (ants, aphids, hay eaters), too.

The easiest way to find it is through Google Images.

The message was edited INO-12/11/2023 20: 39

19.12.2023 22:51, CosMosk

Lucid Key-standard
3I key - Dmitriev's homepage-software and instructions.
In principle, some key can be collected from private phylogenetic publications, where, as a rule, the encoding of morphological features and the matrix are given.
(but most likely it will not help - for morphology, representatives from supraspecific groups are taken - that's when you need to figure it out - where to look for your unknown in general, and for species-generic ones, sequencing varieties are already everywhere. In revisions, as a result, a ready-made non-matrix file is called a dichotomy.key).

in keys like bey-bienko and others, you will suffer from plugging holes (and there is nothing except for new names - only yes, in the original sources or in the next revisions,where the necessary attributes used will not match) and making nomenclature corrections that are not frozen at the moment.

This post was edited by CosMosk - 12/20/2023 12: 48