Summer intern Sara Parilo digitizing previously published identification keys
Funded by U.S. National Science Foundation REVSYS grant (DEB-0919333, local link, NSF link).
Sara's project this summer (June to August 2011) at the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago, IL, USA) is to digitize previously published dichotomous identification keys of Apioceridae and Mydidae in order to make enhanced online versions of these keys available to entomologists.
The software Lucid Phoenix is used to import the plain text of the dichotomous keys from scanned literature and to enhance the keys with either previously published illustrations or newly taken photographs of the included flies and features. As some keys were published in French or Spanish, Sara will also translate these keys into English. In addition, the morphological terminology used in the keys will be updated to standardize the identification keys and make them more easily usable. Ultimately, the keys will be uploaded to the online keys site as well as indexed in the Lucidcentral archive and the IdentifyLife archive so as to allow entomologists, amateurs, and interested biologists to have access to these enhanced keys online.