Digital Identification And Knowledge Integretation For Biological Taxonomy

The 21-century is called information era, computer and network have become very common and digital information has been increasingly advocated in China. It's necessary for traditional disciplines to carry out digital information construction if they want to keep the step with the informatization trend worldwide. Biological taxonomy is in the case since biodiversity research and popularization require paper-based taxonomic bioinformation available online and shared globally. Due to lack of computer-aided tools and few experts' participation, the digitization of taxonomic bioinformation makes slow progress. Therefore, three innovative techniques for digitizing, generating and reproducing keys and two computer tools for building taxonomic identification systems and biodiversity databases, which could successfully provide a complete electronic solution for producing, integrating, publishing and sharing taxonomic bioinformation online, were developed by using information technology. InsectX and W-QPM were also developed as examples for their application based on this solution.The major results of this study are summarized as follows:1. The coding technique for key digitizationDue to direct simulation of expertise, the rule-based method of key digitization has many drawbacks, such as little expansibility, a 2D-matrix of character scores is used to record the matching relation between objects and characters. The 2D-matrix and other information of identification keys are saved in a high-structured XML module. This matrix-based method leads to rapid analysis and flexible application for computers and lays a foundation for further development and application of taxonomic bioinformation.2. The division criteria for heuristic key generation A new division criteria was proposed to generate dichotomous keys digitally and efficiently. It works on the matrix-based expertise of objects and characters, and chooses heuristically between possible ways of branching a key by using a global optimization which is primarily determined by character priority, taxon priority or compositive priority, and secondarily by key length and sum of character rank. As the new criteria runs as the core algorithm, KeyMaker, a new professional program for key generation which attains or surpasses DELTA Key in the capability of key-optimizing, could save considerable time and mental effort for entomologists in key construction.3. The generation of secondary identification keysSecondary identification keys(SIKs) only include user-specified objects and related characters, which simplifies the identification procedure with traditional keys and improves its efficiency. The generation of SIKs, known as the key-to-key technique, operates on backward reasoning based on available general identification keys and heuristic recombination of identifying pathways. Currently, InsectX has managed to generate SIKs of any insect taxa at family level or above and any known species of Braconidae in China at species level.4. A tool for developing knowledge system to assist biological identification and taxonomic studyThis tool is designed for taxonomists and biodiversity officers to make traditional taxonomic information digitized and available online. After users finish collecting and sorting out taxonomic materials, such hard work as making web pages, building databases and publishing websites will be done automatically. The system obtained is embedded with functions of learning evolutionary tree, assisting identifications, generating SIKs, training of species identification, searching and querying, then can meet the needs of taxonomic researches and studies entirely. 5. A tool for developing biodiversity databasesThis tool collects biodiversity information (taxonomic hierarchy, discriminating characters, geographic distribution, sample description and species images), and compiles them into two comprehensive transplantable databases which are used as knowledge bases for developing other taxonomic software or systems. This tool was used to build the most complete diversity database of Braconidae in China, which consists of 731 taxa (including 569 species) and 128 keys.6. InsectX, a web system for insect taxonomy in ChinaAs one of the largest biodiversity databases in China, InsectX includes 984 keys and 1 873 taxa, which are descripted with names, characters, distribution, identifying procedure and terms explanation, and illustrated with images of 2 343 species and 284 characters. With all these information organized in the tree-form of systems, InsectX provides users with online identification using web-keys or SIKs and training of intuitionistic identification, which enables it to be an important electric tool for insect taxonomy and science education.7. W-QPM, a mobile Wap-platform for plant quarantine pestsW-QPM is a mobile expert system based on Wap. It provides about 203 plant quarantine pests including information on taxonomic hierarchy, morphology, source or producing area, host plants and species images, and enables users to enhance capability of identification with multi-entry keys. Quarantine officers can log on it with mobile terminals like Wap-phones or PDAs anywhere at anytime, to view quarantine information, identify quarantine pests or inquire experts online.