An interactive identification key: the Philippine Derbidae project

Issue Date

7-2011

Abstract

Identification is the process of finding unknown organism to which an organism belongs. There are several methods that are available for aiding this process. The most common is the use of a conventional paper-based identification keys - a tedious and time consuming work. The other one is with the help of a computer-aided identification keys - with more optiAons, support back-tracking, provide pictures of excluded species as well as those that are still under consideration, and provides drawings or pictures of characters or body parts that is/are being described (Yap and Froese, 2005). With about 160 genera and 1500 species, Debridae represents the third larger family of Fulgoromorpha (FLOW, 2010). F Muir (1917) was able to comprehensively collect and study them in the Philippines. He identified and described a total of 39 genera and 98 species based on the large collection of Prof. C. F. Baker and his own. Most hemipterist have paid less attention to the debrid fauna of the Philippines, aside from those that are found attacking economically important plants. The endemicity of the debris was noted by Muir (1917), and clearly showed that many more species remain to be undiscovered. Using Xper2 - an open e-tool to manage descriptive data - we present here the first illustrated computer-aided identification key for the known Philippine debrid genera based on diagnostical morphological characters. This computer-aided key would facilitate much faster identification of Philippine debris in the field and would be helpful to those studying debris with limited access to foreign literature.

Source or Periodical Title

Transactions of the National Academy of Science and Technology

ISSN

0115-8848

Volume

33

Issue

1

Page

132

Document Type

Article

College

College of Agriculture and Food Science (CAFS)

Language

English

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS