mites


			How to use the Keys
			1. Let's say this mystery species (fig. 1) turns up in one of our samples and we have no idea what it is. We can use the keys to try and find a match in one of the libraries. 2. Open the "What is it?" key. This is the most general key, and it will lead us to more specific keys later on. 3. Below is the main layout of the key (fig. 2). There are four quadrants. Quadrant 1 are our "Features". This is where we can input characteristics about our specimen. If we click on the page icons next to the features, a webpage will pop up with images that illustrate the different states for that feature. Quadrant 2 are the "Entities". In this key, the basal nodes of the entities correspond to the subsequent keys, with the exception of "pseudoscorpions" because there are only two species in the library, and they are represented within this key. Clicking on the page icons next to an entity will show you a webpage with a sample of what those species look like. The purposes of Quandrants 3 and 4 are shown in the next step.

			4. An advantage of the Lucid key over dichotomous keys is that we do not have to fill in all the feature states. If we are unsure of the body shape of our specimen, we can skip to the next feature. Looking at the specimen, we can tell it has three pairs of legs. We can open up the leg feature by clicking on the plus sign next to it, then select "three pairs" by clicking in the empty box. A blue check mark should appear. A few things happen from this action, as pictured below (fig. 3). We see in Quadrant 4 that our feature selection has been recorded. Quadrant 4 will eventually show us a list of all our selected features. Additionally, some entities have moved from Quadrant 2 to Quadrant 3. The groups which do not contain species with three pairs of legs have been thrown out. Quadrant 3 records these species, while Quadrant 2 retains possible matches to our specimen.

			5. Let's continue to input features. We can see our specimen has segmented antennae, but it may be unclear as to the number of segments. In this key, we can select both features that contain segmented antennae, so we don't discard anything accidentally. We can also see that our specimen has a forked posterior appendage and that it has a pale or white body. After selecting these features, the key looks as it is pictured below (fig. 4).

			6. We can see that all entities have been discarded except for one. From the feature states we have selected, the key has determined that our specimen is a collembola, either arthropleonid or symphypleonid. By clicking on the page icons, we can see that our specimen does look similar to the sample collembola. This is enough of an identification for us to move on to a more specific key. 7. There are four keys to morphospecies: Mites, Collembola, Spiders, and Other. From our result from the "What is it?" key, we can open up the Collembola key to find a more specific identfication of our mystery species. 8. The collembola key (fig. 5) looks the same as the general key. All the functions are the same, but now the features are specific to collembola and the entities contain all the collembola morphospecies. The page icons next to the entities now link to wepages with species descriptions.

			9. As we did before, we can now select feature states which best match our mystery specimen. Again, the page icons next to the features link to webpages which illustrate that feature. We can tell our specimen has a white or clear body, a roughly columnar body shape, short antennae, visible eyes, no "mohawk", and a short furcula. After selecting these features, the key looks as pictured below (fig. 6.).

			10. All but three morphospecies have been discarded from the entities in Quadrant 2. These are the best matches to our specimen. We can click on the page icon next to the entities to to open up species descriptions. The species pages provide identifying characteristics which define the morphospecies. By looking through the species pages, we find that species 3H has the same characteristics as our mystery specimen (fig. 7). Our specimen lacks the rounded posterior of H1 and does not have the amount of dorsal setae of AP1. Our identification for our specimen, therefore, is 3H.

			11. There may be instances where none of the morphospecies match the specimen. In this case, we can change the feature states that we have selected in Quadrant 1. If there was a feature about which we were unsure, we can choose not to select a state, or we can select more than one state, if more than one possibility fits the specimen. This should give us more species in Quadrant 2 that could be a match for the specimen. 12. It's also possible that none of the species in the library match the specimen. Our library reflects everything that we have collected, not everything that exists. In the lab we would give the specimen the next available code and add it to the library.
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