Book Review: Freshwater Oligochaeta of North-West Europe. – Biodiversity Center of ETI, Multimedia Interactive Software. By T. Timm, H. H. Veldhuijzen van Zanten

✍ Scribed by M. Schmelz; R. Collado

• Book ID: 102282557
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 21 KB
• Volume: 89
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1434-2944
• DOI: 10.1002/iroh.200490000

✦ Synopsis

Oligochaetes are an integral component of the benthic macro-and meio-fauna in practically all freshwater bodies. Until recently, however, no up-to-date species determination guide for the European freshwater oligochaete fauna was available, and studies on the species level had to resort to partly outdated revisions (such as the epoch-making and still useful "Aquatic Oligochaeta of the World" by BRINKHURST and co-authors from 1971), to monographies written in not universally mastered languages (such as Czech or Polish), or to works dedicated to other geographical regions (such as North America or Russia). Now a CD-ROM has filled this gap, released by ETI, the Expert Center for Taxonomic Identification at the University of Amsterdam, as part of the series "Interactive Identification System for the European Limnofauna (IISEL)". It covers the oligochaetes and also the few meio-benthic polychaetes (mostly Aeolosomatidae) recorded from freshwater habitats in North-West Europe, a region that comprises Iceland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia except Finland and the northernmost part of Norway, Denmark, France except the Pyrenees, the Benelux countries, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic and some parts of northern Italy. The first author is one of Europe's leading freshwater oligochaetologists. Altogether 208 species are dealt with, including the aberrant Branchiobdellidae (commensalic or ectoparasitic on crayfish) and, for the first time in a guide to freshwater oligochaetes, the Enchytraeidae, a difficult family that necessitates in vivo determination of specimens. The CD basically consists of three sections, all carefully hyper-linked: 1) an up-dated list of species with descriptions, illustrations, synonyms and taxonomic references, 2) a system of grid-based distribution data for each species, and 3) a traditional dichotomous text key to species, accompanied by an interactive key to families. The framework includes a higher taxa module, a glossary explaining scientific and technical terms, a compilation of the relevant taxonomic literature, and an introduction with historical, morphological, ecological and technical information. All data are organized in windows that are easily accessible and clearly structured. The underlying software "Linnaeus II", developed by ETI for biodiversity documentation, deserves an award for being particularly pertinent and for its userfriendliness. This CD can be used as an information source regarding a given species, its morphological key characters and its separation from other similar species; it also provides information on the species richness and species composition of geographical areas selected by the user. The distribution data are especially impressive, results of a lifelong gathering of species records by the first author and published here for the first time, elegantly processed by the interactive "MapIt" tool. The keys are the weakest part of this work. The interactive key, i.e. the program that allows you to enter the characters that you see in a specimen and that displays the taxa that match this character combination, is worked out only to the family level, which means that the major advantage of an electronic identification tool over a traditional key has been exploited only to a small extent. The text key to species, on the other hand, suffers from an adherence to the classification levels; the identification path always passes through the families, although family-level characters may be inconspicuous or even absent in otherwise easily identifiable specimens; the same applies to some genera. Furthermore, several alternatives in the decision-tree are not mutually exclusive, which means that the user may have to try both ways or to browse the species list. The keys should be adapted to the quality level of the other parts; a better introductory assistance for beginners is also recommendable (e.g., overview illustrations of the body organization in the various higher taxa and a guide to separate oligochaetes/polychaetes from other freshwater 'worms' like nematodes, flatworms, nematomorphs or dipteran larvae). The authors of the CD-ROM actively invite comments, corrections and additions from users for incorporation in a follow-up version of the software. R. M. SCHMELZ, R. COLLADO Internat. Rev. Hydrobiol.