Hi Lena,
If you want to see a really, really cool web-based identification system have a play with this one.
http://www.herbarium2.lsu.edu/grass2/
When someone has a system like that for the polychaetes of anywhere, or a polychaete family worldwide, I'll sit up and take notice.
But realistically it may be some way off, and have to wait until a bit more hard graft taxonomy is done to sort it all out ...
Cheers,
Geoff
-----Original Message-----
From: annelida-bounces from oat.bio.indiana.edu [mailto:annelida-bounces from oat.bio.indiana.edu] On Behalf Of Elena Kupriyanova
Sent: Thursday, 7 November 2013 5:43 p.m.
To: Annelida from magpie.bio.indiana.edu
Subject: Re: [Annelida] species database
Dear friends and colleagues,
As a follow up to Eunice's message, I would like to re-phrase her question
to make it (hopefully) clearer what we are after. As many of you know, we
produced a fully illustrated (with beautiful original photographs)
identification web-based guide to some native Australian, known invasive,
and potential invasive polychaetes. Now are also writing a paper that,
among other things, would compares our guide with other similar (? )
products. Hence the question - *when you have to identify polychaetes, what
do you normally use, other than conventional taxonomic guides, keys, and
primary taxonomic papers? Are there any good web-based identification
tools?* We are well aware of numerous databases of species *names*, most of
these online databases (I am sorry I have to say this, but I still will)
are pretty useless, others, especially WORMS are quite good, but none of
them as far we are aware, are *actual identification tools* and all of them
(?) lack illustrations that are good enough to recognise the species. Here
is an example of a very good source of information on Hydroides elegans
http://invasions.si.edu/nemesis/browseDB/SpeciesSummary.jsp?TSN=68295illustrated
by a photograph that can belong to any of nearly 100
*Hydroides* species. Attached to this message is an example of the type of
illustrations we have in our guide.
Hopefully this clarifies what we would like to know. Looking forward to
hearing your comments
Wormly,
Lena
On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 12:48 PM, Eunice Wong <euniceewong from gmail.com> wrote:
> HI all,
>> Can I please know what online database / directories do you use to look up
> any info for a species? And what tools do you use to identify an unknown
> species?
>> Besides traditional guidebooks, googling, WoRMS, Encyclopedia of Life /
> Catalogue of Life, I'd love to find out what useful databases are out
> there...
>> Thank you!
>> Eunice
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