0857-B1
Pastor L. Malabrigo Jr.[1] and Edwino S. Fernando
The interactive identification and information retrieval system on the Philippine rattans presented here is a product of the integration of secondary data from different publications and primary data that were gathered from detailed examination and observations of field and herbarium specimens.
A total of 150 characters were used to describe each of the 80 taxa of Philippine rattans, which include 65 species and 15 varieties. These characters included, among others, plant habit, distribution, altitudinal range, and descriptions of the different plant parts. Each character was encoded for each rattan taxon in a character matrix in the DOS-based program TAXASOFT. They were later converted to the Windows-based program Description Language for Taxonomy (DELTA). The DELTA system generated the interactive key and the descriptions of the Philippine rattans presented in this paper.
The DELTA-based program developed in this study is limited by the following: 1) paucity of information available on the Philippine rattans; 2) inability of the program to code a species for more than one character state in a character; and 3) the highly technical taxonomic terms. Nevertheless, this program illustrates its use in interactive identification and information retrieval for the Philippine rattans.
Over the past few decades, rattans have proven their worth in trade and industry. They are among the most important forest products of Southeast Asia, closely following timber. The enumerable uses of rattan, including as significant source of domestic products that are used in everyday life, make the species so important to man. Moreover, the development of extensive local or folk rattan taxonomies reflects the social significance of rattans (Dransfield 1992).
However, despite the importance and the recent upsurge of interest in rattans, the rattan flora of much of the rattan-growing areas of Southeast Asia remains poorly known. Several problems regarding the establishment of the identity of the rattan species have been encountered. Widespread species may be referred to many names and where people from different language groups live near to each other, several names may be used even for local rattan species. Such uncritical use of vernacular names has resulted to serious confusion.
In addition, many of the rattans have additional qualifying epithets in Malay or aboriginal tongues. In Malay, many of these qualifying names have obvious significance and indicate specific characteristics of the plants.
Nevertheless, there is an enormous confusion in local names even within countries. For instance, in Sabah "rotan batu" is a cane 2-4 cm in diameter, but in the Malay Peninsula it is a cane 0.5 cm. in diameter. In fact, they are totally different species. In Nabawan (Sabah), all economic though botanically different species are called "rotan pipit". Some names are rather consistently applied, e.g., "rotan sega" (Calamus caesius) in Malaysia and "rotan tamam" (the cultivated Calamus caesius) in South Borneo (PCARRD 1990). The confusion in local names makes it impossible to rely on them. Even within the same country, botanically similar species may be known by different local names in different states or provinces. In Palawan, the presence of true Calamus caesius remained unrecorded until 1979 because "sika", the name by which it is called in Palawan, is said to be the vernacular name of an unrelated and rather rare species (Calamus spinifolius) on Luzon (Merrill 1922). Incidentally, it was also responsible for the incorrect recording of Calamus spinifolius in Palawan. There has been much confusion stemming from early works incorporating uncritical lists of local names and their botanical equivalents. This, unfortunately, has been perpetuated from one publication to another. There is an obvious need for a critical reappraisal.
A key to the identification of the taxa of a group under study is one of the most useful and most used products of taxonomy. The key, along with the descriptions of the taxa, forms the principal interface between taxonomists and the outside world. However, a key in its usual form, the dichotomous printed key, has a lot of drawbacks. The writer of the dichotomous key may overlook useful characters, or he may have choose to omit some characters in favor of the one most useful character at each dichotomy. More often, the user of a dichotomous key may have a specimen that does not possess the organ discussed in the key, either because of insufficient collection or collection at a different phenological stage.
Another difficulty that the user may experience is the considerable time spent in familiarizing himself with the terminology and philosophy of the writer of the key. Truly dichotomous characters are rarely discovered and overlapping character states are common.
On the other hand, when taxonomic descriptions are prepared for input into computer programs, the form of the coding is usually dictated by the requirements of a particular program or set of programs. This restricts the type of data that can be represented and the number of other programs that can use the data. Even when working in a particular program, it is frequently necessary to set up different versions of the same basic data. The potential advantages of automation especially in connection with large groups cannot be realized if the data have to be restructured by hand for every operation. To overcome these problems DELTA (Description Language for Taxonomy) system was developed (Dallwitz, Paine, & Zurcher 1993)
DELTA is a standardized format for coding taxonomic descriptions developed by Dalwitz et al. (1993). DELTA format data can be connected into natural language descriptions and into formats required by programs for key generation, interactive identification and information retrieval, phenetic analysis and phylogenetic analysis. The system is versatile, easy to understand and designed to minimize coding errors.
The DELTA system is composed of several programs including CONFOR, a format conversion program which converts DELTA-format data into natural language or into formats required by several other programs including KEY (generation of keys), DIST (generation of distance matrices), PAUP Mac Clade (Nexus) and HENNIG 86, (cladistic analysis) and INTKEY (interactrive identification and information retrieval).
Among the different programs of the DELTA system, the INTKEY allows relatively easy rapid and flexible identification even in fragmentary material. In addition, it provides a wide array of ways of retrieving information for various purposes. As a result, Watson's data bank for world grass genera has served as a testing ground for the development of new technologies for identification and information retrieval which are helping generate testable hypothesis in other disciplines (Amarasinghe & Watson 1989) and are starting to greatly extend the range of taxonomic services (Thomasson 1987; Thomasson et al. 1986). Thomasson (1987), however was called for the development of similar computer banks of macromorphological and micromorphological data of the Cyperaceae.
Information regarding the distributional range, altitudinal range, morphological and anatomical characteristics of Philippine rattans were obtained from books, manuals, floras monographs and other bibliographic materials. A thorough bibliographic review was made to ensure the reliability of the characters/information from the different bibliographic sources.
Specimen collection, field observation and photo documentation were also conducted particularly in the province of Palawan, where high rattan endemism was recorded.
Local people were consulted in the identification of rattan species in the field. They also provide some useful information such as distribution range, habit, local name and utilization of some species.
The bulk of information came from actual observations and detailed examination of correctly identified botanical specimens contained in the three herbaria in the University of the Philippines, Los Baños, namely: College of Forestry and Natural Resources Herbarium (LBC); Ecosystems Research and Development Bureau Herbarium (EBL); and Institute of Biological Sciences, University of the Philippines Los Baños Herbarium (CAHP). Herbarium specimens were used as basis in determining the identity of collected but unknown rattan species.
All the information derived from the bibliographic references, field observation and herbarium specimens examination were integrated in order to have a truly reliable set of information. However, there are some species that can be considered as lesser known rattans, maybe because of their rarity, and therefore information is very limited. A matrix of characters was prepared to facilitate easy data encoding.
The data/information was first encoded in a DOS-based software (TAXASOFT) then, later converted to Windows-based DELTA software (INTKEY) through some initialization files (INTKEYINI).
A total of 150 characters were used as basis in distinguishing each species from the others.
The interactive identification and information retrieval on the Philippine rattans presented in this paper was a product of the integration of the secondary data from the bibliographical information by authors who are experts in rattans, actual field surveys and observations, and detailed examination of the herbarium specimens.
A complete INTKEY version of the Philippine rattans data bank is available for use on MS-DOS microcomputers. It demonstrates both its flexibility and its capacity to cope with a very large data bank. The program is really very useful, for we can have a data base, data analysis and different types of keys with a very small bytes of the computer. In addition, there are still a lot of information such as key construction, comparative diagnosis, and more importantly the interactive identification and information retrieval that can be generated from the software. However, just like any computer-assisted program, the DELTA-INTKEY has some limitations:
1. There is very limited information available for the Philippine rattans and as a result most of the species are not coded for some characters. If a user incidentally used one of the uncoded characters for a species, that species will automatically be eliminated.
2. The program does not have the provision to code a species for more than one character state in a character. Thus, the distribution of the species is not a reliable character for those species that can be found in more than one island. For example, Calamus cumingianus occurs in the island of Luzon and in the island of Mindanao, Calamus balerensis occurs only in Luzon, and Calamus bicolor occurs only in Mindanao. In this case, the character states for the distribution will be; 1) Luzon, 2) Mindanao, and 3) Luzon and Mindanao. Calamus cumingianus will fall under character state 3) Luzon and Mindanao. If an unknown specimen of Calamus cumingianus was collected in Luzon, the user of the key in trying to identify the specimen will select character state 1) Luzon. Unfortunately, the key will give a wrong identification that is Calamus balerensis instead of Calamus cumingianus.
3. Only people with the knowledge in the taxonomic terms can use the key.
Rattans can be considered as one of the most complex groups of plants. With so many species and complex synonymy, these are bound to many nomenclatural problems. The interactive data bank developed in this study will somehow erase confusion regarding the identity of the species complex. However, it should be understood that the output of the program depends on the information that were encoded in the software.
This study can play a very important role in the succeeding studies regarding the species group because of the fact that the identification of a species under study is the first thing that should be established in any bio-resources study. Still, there are a number of things that should be done.
A lot of vegetation surveys should be made in order to have a better understanding and erase the confusions regarding the identity of Philippine rattans. Accordingly, additional information is still needed to further improved and increase the reliability of this interactive identification and information retrieval. However, any additional data/information can be easily incorporated in the program.
Due to the complexity of the species, identification of rattans should not be based in one or just few characters. Similarly, characterization of the species should not be based on a single collection/specimen only, because of the wide variation of characters within the species.
It is very important to take note that rattan species generally thrives in undisturbed forest areas only few occur in plantations or secondary forest. Considering the country's tremendous rate of forest destruction, it is not surprising that most of the rattan species are on the verge of extinction. More than half of the Philippine rattans are in the rare ecological status. For this reason, there is an urgent need for research related on the genetic conservation, protection and sustainable utilization of the species group.
The program on the interactive identification and information retrieval, as well as the character matrix for the data are available in the CD-ROM attached in this paper.
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Email: [email protected]
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[1] Assistant Professor,
Department of Forest Biological Sciences, College of Forestry and Natural
Resources, University of the Philippines at Los Baños, College Laguna,
Philippines. |