3 
The participants will welcome comments and suggestions from the biological 
community. 
John H. Beaman 
Department of Botany and Plant Pathology 
Michigan State University 
East Lansing, Michigan 48823 
20 January 1970 
PROGRAM PACKAGE FOR COMPUTER AIDS TO IDENTIFICATION 
A program package being developed by Larry E. Morse investigates the use of 
time-sharing computers a$ aids to identification of biological specimens. The 
techniques penter on taxon/character data matrices, using the same data for all 
programs. Although final checking continues, the current versions of the various 
programs are available for experimental use, from Larry E. Morse, Department of 
Botany, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48823, either as xeroxed 
lists or punched tape, at cost. Informal program descriptions, instructions for 
data preparation, and sample data and output are also available. A comprehensive 
article on the entire project should be completed soon, and a finalized "package 15 
will be distributed then. The seven programs in the current set are described 
below. At present, each handles up to 20 character couplets for up to 50 taxa. 
All programs are in Fortran. 
IDENT -- 
KEY 
DSCRBE-- 
CNTRST- - 
QUIZ -- 
CHANGE-- 
TEST -- 
Identifies specimens on-line by conversational polyclave algorithm. 
Constructs and prints indented dichotomous identification keys from matrix 
data, by algorithm described in Amer. Jour. Botany 55:737 (1968). 
Prints diagnostic descriptions of taxa, listing characters in order of 
decreasing importance. 
Contrasts two or more taxa, listing differentiating and similar characters. 
Queries students on most important characters of a taxon. 
Editing program for updating or correcting information in a stored data matrix. 
Tests the effectiveness of a matrix for identification and keying. 
Several subroutines are shared by the various programs, including routines for read¬ 
ing a matrix from disk to core, selecting the most useful characters for differen¬ 
tiating a group of taxa, and ranking the characters of a particular taxon in order 
of importance. 
Larry E. Morse 
December 13, 1969 
