Field guide

A field guide is generally used for species determination of animals, plants, fungi or other organisms on the basis of archived or collected specimens or on the basis of observation in the natural habitat.

Identification books can be roughly divided into two groups according to their structure, the procedure for determining the target group and the scientific claim.

For the interested layman is a variety rich pictorial identification guides are available in which the determination of species primarily on the overall appearance or characteristic, easily recognizable individual characteristics (eg flower color of plants). Depending on the detail of the determination of the book, this provision is supplemented by the general appearance of easy to be confused species nor by illustrations and / or descriptions of characteristic individual features (eg Blattzähnung of plants, details of the bird's plumage ).

Identification books for purely scientific use, however, are imaged less detail in the rule. The determination of the species membership of an object is usually done after a dichotomous key. Here are sequentially polled opposing pairs of feature combinations or individual features, and the decision results in terms of a feature pair to the next question, so that narrowed down to specific sub-groups, until finally only a single species is in question. Determination of books of this kind have a long tradition and cover most of the native flora and fauna in much more detail from the illustrated field guides for laymen. A highly specialized vocabulary, which is discussed generally in the introduction part, difficult for the beginner access to dichotomous keys and use requires experience, as one wrong turn during the determination process may lead to an erroneous identification.

Identification books with dichotomous keys often serve exclusively the identification of species and included on the characteristics necessary for the determination addition consistently little or no additional information. They should therefore be ideally used in conjunction with appropriate reference works (or even illustrated field guides ) if further information on the species considered are desired.