Identification tool for fishes by using meristic and morphometric characteres

鱼类的识别对于鱼类学家和渔业生物学家来说非常重要，因为他们需要知道鱼类的名称。然而，通常很难准确识别鱼类，因为在不同的群体中有很多相似的物种，如鲈形目。当鱼类学家和渔业生物学家试图识别鱼类时，他们通常依靠野外指南和识别键。对于许多渔业生物学家来说，钥匙通常很难理解，因为直到钥匙的末端有太多的对句。特别是科属检索表在许多情况下不能清楚地显示区别特征。有强烈的需求，以创建一个识别工具，使非分类学家识别鱼类使用相对容易的字符，如可数和可测量的字符。近年来，计算机技术的发展使许多形态学特征用于鱼类鉴定成为可能。由于部分特征和形态特征对于非分类学家来说比较容易识别鱼类，而且这些特征可以很容易地通过计算机进行统计处理，因此我们试图利用这些特征来建立一个识别工具。我们的研究成功地产生了实际有用的识别工具的基础上，原来设计的程序。当使用者将分生体和形态学数据放入搜寻框中，按下“搜寻”按钮，该工具便会提供候选物种。这一工具被放在国家自然和科学博物馆的网站上，可以很容易地从网站上下载。该识别工具在渔业生物学家广泛使用的Microsoft Excel软件上运行。

Identifications of fishes are very important for ichthyologists and fisheries biologists who need to know names of fishes. However, it is usually difficult to exactly identify fishes because there are so many similar species in diversified groups such as percoids. When ichthyolgists and fisheries fisheries biologists try to identify fishes, they usually rely on field guides and identification keys. Keys are usually difficult for many fisheries biologists to follow, because there are so many couplets until reaching to the end of the keys. Particularly the keys for families and genera do not clearly show distinguishing characters I many cases. There are strong needs to create an identification tool which enables non-taxonomists identify fishes by using relatively easy characters such as countable and measurable characters. Recent developments of computer technology make practically possible to use many meristic and morphometric characters for identification of fishes. Because meristic and morphometric characters are relatively easy for non-taxonomists to identify fishes and those characters can be easily treated by computer with help of statistical program, we tried to establish an identification tool by using those characters. Our study successful produced the practically useful identification tool based on originally designed program. When users of this tool put meristic and morphometric data into search boxes and push "search" button, the tool provides candidate species. This tool was put on a website of the National Museum of Nature and Science ; it is easily downloaded from the website. This identification tool run on the software Microsoft Excel which is widely used by fisheries biologists.