Landmark superimposition for taxonomic identification

Abstract

The identification of organisms is a time-consuming task even for highly specialized researchers. Many ways to accelerate the identification process have been devised - from pictorial keys to automatic, machine identification - with different degrees of success. This paper explores landmark configurations as an aid to taxonomic identification. The basic hypothesis rests on the analogy between human fingerprints and organism landmark configuration. Translated into biological terms, it asks whether individual landmark configurations can be used as diagnostic characteristics for species identification. Water mites of the genus Torrenticola were used as test organisms. The results show that identification can be made simpler through the use of landmark configurations. © 2004 The Linnean Society of London.