Identification (biology)
Identification in biology is the process of assigning a pre-existing taxon name to an individual organism. Identification of organisms to individual scientific names may be based on individualistic natural body features, experimentally created individual markers, or natural individualistic molecular markers. Individual identification is used in ecology, wildlife management and conservation biology. The more common form of identification is the identification of organisms to common names or scientific name. By necessity this is based on inherited features of the sexual organisms, the inheritance forming the basis of defining a class. The features may, e. g., be morphological, anatomical, physiological, behavioral, or molecular.
The term "determination" may occasionally be used as a synonym for identification, or as in "determination slips".
Identification methods may be manual or computerized and may involve using identification keys, browsing through fields guide that contain species accounts, comparing the organism with specimens from natural history collections, or taking images to be analyzed and compared against a pre-trained knowledge base with species information.
