Identification & Terminology
Terminology
Identification
Interactive Keys
Conventional Keys
Colour Field Guides
Terminology
Some key terms and morphological structures can be found here in the near future.
Also see: http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/tropicos/most/Glossary/glosefr.html
Originally published as "Glossarium Polyglottum Bryologiae", this web version contains 1,181 English descriptive terms, their definitions, and in some cases, an image illustrating the definition. The French, German, and Spanish translations are also included.
Identification
In order to identify specimens, both traditional dichotomous keys and interactive keys are provided below. Interactive keys are especially useful for the identification of liverworts when one is confronted with fragmented material or when critical characters are absent.
Computer-based interactive keys have several advantages over conventional keys (see Dallwitz, Paine & Zurcher 2002) including:
Unrestricted character use, i.e., any characters can be used, in any order, and characters which are not available on the specimen, or whose interpretation is not clear to the user, can be avoided.
Character deletion and changing, i.e., the values of any character can be changed at any stage of the identification, or any character deleted from the identification.
Easy updating, i.e., keys are maintained simply by making corrections, additions, and deletions of taxa, characters, and character states, whereas updating of conventional keys is relatively difficult.
Illustrations of Characters and character states.
Interactive Keys
The following interactive keys are available at Discover Life. Discover Life also has identification guides or interactive keys for a range of organisms, including plants, mammals, insects, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.
Liverwort genera (under construction)
Frullania in New Zealand
Conventional or Dichotomous Keys
The following conventional or dichotomous keys are available for:
Liverworts Families (link under construction)
Frullania in New Zealand
Colour Field Guides
Coming soon
Website created and maintained by K. Brennan. Contact: Brennan_K_M@yahoo.com.
Questions regarding content. Contact: Matt vonKonrat: mvonkonrat@fieldmuseum.org
All content © LIIF
Last update: Feb 1, 2004