ANNiKEY Interactive

A taxonomic information system and multi-access identification key to Annelida

https://researchdata.museum.vic.gov.au/Annelida/

Authors
Chris Glasby      Australian Museum/Museum & Art Gallery Northern Territory, Australia [annelids]
Olga Biriukova  formerly Museum & Art Gallery Northern Territory, Australia, now Charles Darwin University, Brinkin, NT 0909, Australia [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]

Citations

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. 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. 6 March 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14848165.

This is version 3, published 6 March 2025 (superseded versions 1 and 2 were not published)

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. A link is also provided within ANNiKEY to an online Annelida Glossary. These tools allow the user to obtain:

1.    identifications of adult annelids from any part of the world to tribe, subfamily, family or higher taxonomic level;
2.    diagnostic and full descriptions of families and higher taxa;
3.    general information on biology, further reading, and automated Web searches for all families and higher taxa.

Data sources
A previous version of ANNiKEY was POLiKEY, as DELTA database of 95 characters and 82 family-level taxa 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 POLiKEY is Beesley, P.L., Ross, G.J.B. & Glasby, C.J. (eds) 2000.  Fauna of Australia. Volume 4A, Polychaetes & Allies: The Southern Synthesis. Data for the few families that were not treated by Beesley, Ross & Glasby (2000), and for updated taxonomic information, were drawn from Rouse & Pleijel (2001), 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 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 author’s 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 © Copyright, 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 provided support and encouragement for the duration of the project.