DEVELOPMENT OF AN ELECTRONIC FIELD GUIDE FOR BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES.

F.H. SaintOurs, R.D. Stevenson, and R.A. Morris. University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 02125-3393

With a heightened awareness of the connections between water, human health and biodiversity, community-based aquatic bio-monitoring projects are expanding. These citizen science projects often require the identification of a large variety of macroinvertebrates. However only limited field guides used by fly-fishermen and dragonfly enthusiasts are available while the more complete traditional keys are much more difficult to use. Expert help and extensive experience have long been the only ways to ensure accurate identifications, even at the taxonomic level of families. An alternative is the production of Electronic Field Guides (EFGs, www.cs.umb.edu/efg) that combine traditional field guides, keys, and the Internet to identify organisms. For most people the image-based approach offers advantages over keys and EFGs overcome the economic constraints of producing standard field guides. Our EFG for insects of coastal Massachusetts streams covers 80 genera from 40 families, and includes species information. Readily available software applications and a digital camera that is compatible with standard photography and microscopy equipment were used to create a database that can be customized and expanded. The process for creating an EFG and putting it on the web are described, and we demonstrate how mini-guides are generated for field use.