Message - 7th IAL Symposium

The 7 th International Association for Lichenology Symposium 2012
COMPUTER-AIDED IDENTIFICATION TOOLS: PROGRESS AND PROBLEMS
Nimis P. L.
Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Italy
In the past, the tools for identifying organisms were printed on paper, in the form of dichotomous
(rarely polytomous) keys. The constraints of a paper-printed text and the absence of computers forced
most authors to organise their keys following the schemes of biological classification (keys to orders,
families, genera, and finally species). Nowadays a wide array of identification tools can be generated
more or less automatically starting from morpho-anatomical databases, such as single-access, multi- or
free-access, and multi-entry keys. The order of couplets (choices) in an identification tool may be defined
by the creator (single-access key), or may be freely selectable by the user (free-access key); a multientry
key is an intermediate form that may combine advantages of both forms if only a small character
subset is included in the multi-entry phase. In all computer-generated keys the process of identification
can be made more or less completely independent from classification, with important and not always
fully exploited consequences on their usability (e.g. for ‘citizen science’). The new identification tools are
available on a variety of media: internet, CD and DVD-Roms, printed paper, and also mobile devices
such as smartphones. Furthermore, open access, an already established best practice in academic
communication, puts the need of permanent cross-linking and data exchange among biodiversity data
holders, while semantic markup of texts permit unprecedented increase of visibility, citations and re-use
of biodiversity information; the electronic media become themselves tools and platforms for indexing,
aggregating and retrieval of information, offering unique opportunities to accelerate biodiversity research
and understanding. All of this is profoundly changing the way identification tools are created, where joint
work among specialists and even the involvement of a large community of users (such as in the Wikiapproach)
can play a much more important role than in the past. This also creates new problems as far
IPRs are concerned, which need careful consideration. An exciting challenge for the next future will be
the creation of computer-aided identification systems permitting an automatic integration of molecular
and morpho-anatomical data.
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