Pest fruit flies of the world

L.E. Carroll, I.M. White, A. Freidberg, A.L. Norrbom, M.J. Dallwitz, and F.C. Thompson

Pest fruit flies of the world – larvae

L.E. Carroll, A.L. Norrbom, M.J. Dallwitz, and F.C. Thompson

Hints on using the Intkey interactive keys

18 August 2018

The toolbars

To get help for an active toolbar button (one that is not grey), first click the button at the right of the main toolbar, then click on the button for which you need help.

Identification

The top-left pane contains a list of the available characters. By default, the characters are in the ‘best’ order for use in identification — that is, the characters near the top of the list tend to lead to shorter identifications, and are the easiest and/or most reliable to use (in the judgement of the authors). The ‘best’ order is automatically recalculated at each stage of the identification. If you want to see the characters in the order used in descriptions, click the button (Natural order).

1. In the top-left pane, click on the character that you want to use.
2. The program displays a window containing a list of character states or a box for entering values such as lengths. If there is an illustration of the character it is automatically displayed (except in Advanced Mode, where the illustration can be displayed by pressing the ‘Image’ button). Subsidiary images showing the positions of the relevant morphological features can be displayed via the ‘Subject’ menu in the image window. Notes on the character can be obtained by pressing the ‘Notes’ button.
3. Click on the state, or enter the value, that applies to your specimen, and click ‘OK’. If you aren’t sure, don’t guess a single state or value. Instead, click on more than one state, enter a range of values, or click ‘Cancel’ and try another character. To deselect a previously selected state, click on it again.
4. The ‘Taxa Remaining’ (top-right) pane shows the taxa that match the information that you have entered. The ‘Taxa Eliminated’ (bottom-right) pane shows the taxa that do not match, with the number of mismatches in parentheses. Repeat from step 1 until ‘Identification complete’ or some other message is displayed in the top-left pane. A ‘Help’ button is also displayed; click this to obtain information on how to proceed (for example, how to confirm the identification).

If, at any stage, you think you’ve made a mistake and want to correct it, click on the appropriate character in the ‘Used Characters’ (bottom-left) pane. The program again displays the window for selecting character states or entering values, and you can change the information you previously entered. You can remove the character from the identification by clearing all the information.

To start a new identification, click the button (Restart identification or query).

Taxon information

Full descriptions and diagnostic descriptions are available for all taxa, and illustrations for most taxa. To view this information, select a taxon (or taxa), and click the button (Information about taxa).

Learning more about Intkey

The program is initially in Normal Mode, which is suitable for most purposes. For more options, select ‘Advanced Mode’ from the ‘File’ menu. Help for all the Intkey options is available in Advanced Mode.

Examples of how to use Intkey are available at:

• Butterflies and moths - demonstration of an interactive key: Introduction and Detailed instructions. You can experiment with this key without any taxonomic knowledge of the group (it was designed for use at Open Days at the CSIRO Division of Entomology).
• An Intkey example: identification.
• An Intkey example: differences.

Morphological terminology

The interactive keys provide illustrations and notes to help with the interpretation of the characters. General references on fly morphology include Courtney et al. (2000), Kotrba (2000), McAlpine (1981), Merz & Haenni (2000), Sinclair (2000), and Teskey (1981). A glossary of terms for fruit flies was published by White et al. (1999).

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