DELTA and Interactive Identification

[Mike Dallwitz]

                                                   CSIRO Division of Entomology
                                     GPO Box 1700, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia
                                       Phone +61 6 246 4075  Fax +61 6 246 4000
                                                      Internet md at ento.csiro.au

                                                                     9 May 1993



> I would like software which performs identifications ...
> I have already looked at systems such as GDE, Montanus and Delta which
> are more concerned with constructing taxonomic keys.
>                                  Adriano Cesar da Silva   adriano at bdt.ftpt.br

DELTA is a general-purpose format for recording taxonomic data. There are two
main program packages which use DELTA-format data: our own (available from the
Taxacom ftp server), and Richard Pankhurst's Pankey package. Both of these
packages include interactive identification programs (INTKEY and ONLINE,
respectively). Many other options are available in the packages, such as
generation of natural-language descriptions, keys, and diagnostic descriptions,
and conversion of the data for use with programs for phylogenetic and phenetic
analysis. I consider key generation to be the least important of these options.
Conventional keys (whether in printed form or incorporated in computer
programs) are greatly inferior as identification aids to programs such as
INTKEY and ONLINE.

Mike Dallwitz