[Taxacom] source of quote about keys: PS

[Stephen Thorpe]

Neal,

Yes, you are talking about routine identification keys, and your comments echo what I was trying to say about the role of diagnosticians as opposed to systematists. There are good identification keys and bad ones, and a systematist whose only interest in facilitating identification by others is forced on them as part of their job is unlikely to make many very good keys. Yes, good illustration is very important, but crucially requires a concise written interpretation - I recall an old key to some Neuroptera which said something like "venation as in fig.1", whereby you are confronted with a nice picture of a wing with about 1000 cells! :)

Stephen

________________________________________
From: Neal Evenhuis [neale at bishopmuseum.org]
Sent: Tuesday, 1 September 2009 11:15 a.m.
To: Stephen Thorpe
Cc: Robin Leech; Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] source of quote about keys: PS

At 11:08 AM +1200 9/1/09, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>In my experience, some biosecurity people (in particular) tend to
>think that the ONLY way to identify something reliably is using a
>key!

There were no biosecurity people around when that quote was
originally made. I was merely giving my hunch on the reasons for why
it was quoted then and why I heard it back in the 1970s when I was in
grad school....

I have no problem with keys if they are done correctly and have nice
illustrations to help those who are unfamiliar with or really need to
"see" the salient characters.

Verbose keys that have no illustrations and/or one page per couplet
(larger than or supplementary to a species description!) are not in
my view the "best" keys and more than not can turn students off to
taxonomy if they happen to run into them.

-Neal