Users quickly become familiar with the critical features of a group of taxa once a dichotomous key has been used a few times. In formal terms, these mean that dichotomous keys are less prone to Type II errors (falsely miscoding a taxon as not having a feature).Īnother and important, though subtle, advantage of dichotomous keys is that they are great pedagogical devices, useful for learning about groups of organisms. This saves time and work in creating the key, and ensures that the author of the key can optimize each step in the key for the taxa in play, and readily ensure accuracy in applying that couplet to the taxa. Two principal strengths of dichotomous keys are that there are a lot of them available (because they are relatively straightforward and quick to create, especially for small to moderate-sized groups), and they are very efficient, accurate and informative when used effectively.īoth these are related to the information efficiency of dichotomous keys – for any given step in the key (except the first), only a subset of taxa need to be considered. Why bother with dichotomous keys?Ī question that’s sometimes asked is “Why bother with dichotomous keys, when systems such as Lucid and DELTA allow us to create and deploy really neat, interactive, random-access keys?” The answer is that both traditional dichotomous keys and modern random-access keys have strengths and weaknesses, and both have a continuing role in identification. In this way, keys in KeyBase are seamlessly linked together, allowing users to follow an identification through a KeyBase project from the highest to the lowest available taxonomic level. A key to the species within genus A will be automatically linked by KeyBase to any instances of A in other keys within the project. KeyBase automatically links keys in a project together using the taxonomic scope of the key. For example, one key in a project may be to families, others may be to genera within families and others may be to species within families or subspecies within species. As well as being grouped by project, keys in KeyBase may be arranged in a taxonomic hierarchy. A project is a group of keys related in some way, usually being keys for a particular taxonomic group in a particular geographic region such as a country, state or bioregion. Keys in KeyBase are arranged into projects. Based on concepts originally developed for the Lucid Phoenix project at the Centre for Biological Information Technology, The University of Queensland, KeyBase provides an environment where dichotomous keys, traditionally developed for print, can be more easily and effectively deployed and used. KeyBase is a database and web application for managing and deploying interactive dichotomous keys to flora and fauna.
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