Taxonomic resources

ANNiKEY

Authors

Chris Glasby, Australian Museum/Museum & Art Gallery Northern Territory, Australia [annelids]
Olga Biriukova, Charles Darwin University, Brinkin, NT 0909, Australia (formerly Museum & Art Gallery Northern Territory) [annelids]
Patrick Martin, Royal Belgium Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium [microdriles]
Geoff Dyne, 2 Doolette Place, Kambah ACT, Australia [earthworms]
Serge Utevsky, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ukraine [leeches]
Robin Wilson, Museum Victoria, Australia [annelids]

Introduction

ANNiKEY Interactive is an identification tool for family level taxa of the phylum Annelida - a DELTA database of 334 characters and 166 taxa at or around family level. The data are interrogated using the open-source DELTA program Intkey, which enables both interactive identification and taxonomic query functionality. The same data set was used to produce a static key to and accounts of annelid families published in Zookeys; this publication provides useful background information. A link to an online Annelida Glossary within ANNiKEY facilitates use of the characters (see Citations below). These tools allow the user to obtain:

  • identifications of adult annelids from any part of the world to family-level;
  • diagnostic and full descriptions of families-level annelid taxa;
  • general information on biology, further reading, and automated Web searches.

    • Data sources

    A previous version of ANNiKEY was POLiKEY, a DELTA database of 95 characters and 82 family-level prepared by Kristian Fauchald in 1995. The original data set has been substantially revised and updated to reflect the enormous amount of work that has been published in recent years. The primary additional data source, including illustrations, for ANNiKEY is Beesley PL, Ross GJB, Glasby CJ (eds) 2000.Polychaetes & Allies. The Southern Synthesis. Fauna of Australia Vol 4A. Polychaeta, Myzostomida, Pogonophora, Echiura, Sipuncula. CSIRO Publishing: Melbourne. xii + 465 pp. Data for the few families that were not treated by Beesley et al. (2000), and for updated taxonomic information, were drawn from Rouse GW, Pleijel F, Tilic E (2022) Annelida. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 432 pp, and this reference was also used as a basis for classification above family level and for family authorities.

    Disclaimer

    ANNiKEY is designed to work for adult, sexually unmodified individuals. ANNiKEY may not be able to identify highly modified sexually mature individuals of some polychaete families (e.g. Syllidae), which often bear little resemblance to unmodified members of their family. Fortunately, incidences of these forms in benthic surveys are usually rare. In the case of oligochaetes, sexually mature adults (bearing a clitellum) will most often be required for accurate identification.

    Future versions and development

    This is the first release of ANNiKEY which we hope to update irregularly, providing new versions from the associated Zenodo repository. Taxonomic changes to family level taxa that will certainly occur can be tracked using the references to taxon pages at the World Register of Marine Species
    The authors welcome comments on ways to improve the system.

    Acknowledgments

    ANNiKEY Interactive was generously supported by the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS), Canberra who provided funding through their granting program (RG18-21), and permission to use illustrations in their publication, Fauna of Australia. Volume 4A, Polychaetes & Allies: The Southern Synthesis. Unmodified images are ©Commonwealth of Australia and reproduced with permission of ABRS; modified images are redrawn with permission of ABRS.
    We thank the many people who generously contributed colour images to the project including Inayat Al Hakim, Arthur Anker, Gary Cranitch, Gavin Daly, Karen Gowlett-Holmes, Tony Griffith, Leslie Harris, Andy Mackie, Eric A. Lazo-Wasem, Michael Marmach (deceased), Eijiroh Nishi, Denis Riek, Greg Rouse, Robin Sanchez-Alt, Alexander Semenov, Anja Schulze and Eunice Wong; as well as the following groups that provided images with an institutional attribution: Australian Museum, Florida Museum of Natural History, Harvard University of Comparative Zoology, iNaturalist, Naturalis Zeeteam, Peabody Museum of Yale University and WoRMS Photo Gallery.
    Toolbar icons in ANNiKEY are modified versions of habitat pictograms at Wikimedia commons and silhouette images from PhyloPic and we are grateful to the creators and maintainers of those resources for their creative commons licensing.
    Finally, we are very grateful to the project support provided by Museums Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, Darwin, Australia, and the Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia, and our ANNiKEY project colleagues, Drs Pat Hutchings and Elena Kupriyanova who also provided encouragement for the duration of the project.

    Suggested citations

    Glasby CJ, Biriukova O, Martin P, Dyne G, Utevsky S, Wilson R (2025) ANNiKEY Linear – diagnoses, descriptions and a single-access identification key to Annelida family-level taxa. ZooKeys, in press.
    Glasby CJ, Biriukova O, Martin P, Dyne G, Utevsky S, Wilson R (2025) ANNiKEY Interactive: a taxonomic information system and multi-access key to Annelida (Ver. 3). doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13738486
    Glasby CJ, Biriukova O, Wilson R (2025) Glossary of terms for identification of the major groups of annelid worms. Last updated 14 Feb 2025. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14848165.