Assessment and Reduction of Taxonomic Error in Benthic Macrofauna Surveys: An Initial Program Focused on Shelf and Slope Polychaete Worms

The MMS has funded several major studies that have required benthic sampling and the subsequent sorting, identification, enumeration, and inventorying of macrofaunal animals. The Smithsonian Institution receives and archives the invertebrate specimens. These faunal inventories are a fundamental data type for the assessments of community diversity, distribution, biomass, function, change with time, and general environmental health in the face of petroleum industry activity. Over the years MMS and benthic ecologists have attempted to assure the quality of the taxonomic identification, but changes in taxonomy and taxonomic errors (incomplete, inconsistent, and incorrect identifications) have proven to be intractable problems. Moreover there have been many new and undescribed species collected, especially on the continental slope. In 1984, MMS funded the first major (7-volume) taxonomic monograph on the Gulf of Mexico polychaeta. It is increasingly difficult for even the most competent of ecologists to correctly and consistently identify collected macrofauna, and taxonomists are increasingly difficult to find.

The project seeks to assess and reduce taxonomic error at the species level through use of computer aided identification. This program makes the transition from the taxonomic monographs, systematic literature, journal descriptions, and identification keys to a digital database, using the polychaetes as an initial test group, important not only in its numerical and biomass dominance, but in its ecological significance as well. Numerical techniques will be employed to place information about identification traits into standard data formats.