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A simple method for computerizing taxonomic treatments
Author(s) -
Whittemore Alan T.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
taxon
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.819
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1996-8175
pISSN - 0040-0262
DOI - 10.2307/1224142
Subject(s) - merge (version control) , computer science , taxon , taxonomy (biology) , row , information retrieval , software , programming language , data mining , biology , ecology
Summary Whittemore, A. T.: A simple method for computerizing taxonomic treatments. – Taxon 45: 503‐511. 1996. – ISSN 0040‐0262. Standard taxonomic treatments are very well adapted to computerization. A method is presented for producing taxonomic treatments using standard commercial software (spreadsheets and word processors). The data from morphological descriptions and other elements of the treatments are stored in the spreadsheet with taxa as rows and characters as columns, and the descriptions are generated using a print merge routine, available in most word processors. Departures from parallelism necessitated by structural differences between taxa or by missing data are easily accommodated using conditional statements in the print merge. Examples are given to illustrate the approach. Treatments prepared in this way are easy to edit for parallelism and internal consistency, and format changes can be entered once for incorporation throughout the treatment. This approach can be used to produce taxonomic treatments in an easily editable form, or as a framework for developing a data structure for use in a database or specialized taxonomy program.