BIOS --
A Plant and Animal Identification System

The knowledge-base approach used to identify garter snakes, as discussed in the textbook Wildlife-Habitat Relationships: Concepts and Applications, Second Edition by Morrison, Marcot, and Mannan, can also be used to develop other expert identification models.  Here's another, for identifying orders, families, and in some cases, species of plants and animals in western U.S.

BIOS is not meant to replace more detailed field guides and identification keys.  Rather, it serves as an example of how example-driven knowledge-base models can be devised to serve as identification tools.

BIOS can be used to identify the following organisms, in western U.S.:

families of plants bearing flowers with sympetalous (fused) corollas

families and species of trees (western species of gymnosperms or conifers only)

orders of insects

families and species of herps (salamanders, frogs, snakes, lizards, and turtles)

species of owls based on their calls

species of gulls, including immature forms

 

I programmed BIOS by using existing field guides and my own knowledge on the characteristics of orders, families, and species of plants and animals.  BIOS consists of a number of smaller knowledge bases, which it automatically calls up, for each taxonomic group.  For each group, I entered known characteristics of taxa as "examples" and used the knowledge programming model 1stClass to calculate an optimal rule set that identifies the examples based on the most spartan use of the characteristics.

As you run BIOS, you can respond to any question by selecting from the characteristics presented, or you can enter "?" (without the quotes) to represent "I don't know."  The model then selects the next set of characteristics that most efficiently identifies the taxon in question, given that unknown.

Programmed by:  Bruce G. Marcot

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