| Summary: | Species identification keys are the most precise and unambiguous tools to properly
identify a specimen down to the species or infra-species level. This is especially true
when the key is richly illustrated with precise pictures or videos. Recent smartphones
(iPhone, Android, etc.) can access through the 3G network to an unlimited and rapidly
growing set of multimedia data on each species (photos, videos, audios). They become
convenient tools to use in the field instead of traditional paper field-guides with a
limited number of illustrations. A student project at the University of Nice, France,
proposed to adapt to smartphones the Holdich and Vigneux “key to crayfish in
Europe”. A prototype, in English, has been prepared and presented to the
European Crayfish Congress in Poitiers, France, 26–29 October, 2010. It needs now to be
discussed with taxonomy and field specialists in order to (1) increase the number of
photos and videos and (2) complete and improve its audio part. Then, a multilingual
version could be designed, so that field specialists of all European countries may use it.
As the database underlying the project is wiki-compatible, a multilingual version could be
designed as a collaborative effort within the crayfish community. Data on each species
(biology, ecology, distribution, etc.) could be added in a second phase, as a
geolocalisation module is linked to the database. Then the identification of invasive
species could be quickly related to maps, in order to alert the crayfish community.
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