Electronic Field Guide Image Identification Exercise.
1. Mouth of a woman, former Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration, Madeline Albright
2. Partial face of Madeline Albright
3. Complete face of Madeline Albright
4. Paw of a Gray fox, Urocyon cinereoargenteus
5. Mouth of a Gray fox
6. Gray fox - road kill, the tail was taken by someone
7. Blanding’s Turtle, Emydoidea blandingii
8. Pink and yellow wild flower Pink Corydalis, Corydalis semprevirens
9. hover fly on cat’s ear Hypochoeris radicata or mouse ear Hiericium pilosella
10. oak apple gall Biorhiza pallida or Amphibolips confluenta cause the gall
How many of the images did you identify correctly?
In the series of Madeline Albright images (1-3) and fox images (4-6) was it easier to recognize the whole organism (3 and 6) rather than just parts of it (1,2, 4,5)?
People classify species in hierarchies from the more general to the more detailed and specific. You may have been confident that the organism in the picture was a member of a particular group, but you may have been unable to identify the organism to genus or species within the group. For example, you may have known that image 4 was a mammal but you may have been unable to say it was a fox, or even more specifically, a gray fox. Similarly, you may have been able to identify image 7 as a reptile or a turtle but you may not have known the common name (Blanding’s Turtle) or the genus and species names (Emydoidea blandingii).
It is fun to compare the images I present with other images found on the Internet using the image feature of the Google search engine. Type in the name I provide and see what you can find. Are you convinced that I have given a correct identification?
At the present time, there are few authoritative sources on the web that specifically link pictures of species with species names. The USDA Plants Database http://plants.usda.gov/plants/index.html and eNature (http://www.enature.com) are two sites that authoritatively link images and names. However, because the images cannot be indexed using Google they can not be found easily. Such a facility would improve accessibility for people who are interested in species identification.
The views and opinions expressed in all articles that appear in "Conservation Perspectives" are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of NESCB.