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ANNELID WORM BIODIVERSITY RESOURCES: RESEARCH RESOURCES

Navigate this page: | Polychaetes | Oligochaetes and Leeches | Annelid Allies | Software | Taxonomy for everyone |

Items here tend to be the support and information links for people who already know something about annelids. For a few general background links and links to classification of various groups see the taxonomy page. Here we cover Polychaete research, Oligochaete/leech research, annelid-allies research, useful software, and some miscellaneous taxonomy links. Some links in the field-trips page might just as well be here also. So check there too.

New annelid name statistics: A summary is provided by BIOSIS. There were 5122 new annelid names from 1978 to 1998 (Zoological Record volumes 115 to 134). To put that in context Hartman listed 11,000 original polychaete names to 1965, and Reynolds and Cook listed over 7000 original oligochaete names to 1992. The number of synonyms amongst those names is considerable but unknown.

Search for taxa (url currrent at Oct'03): The polychaete species and genera occurences in Zoological Record since 1978 may be searched for via Index to organism names ION = public TRITON, Taxonomy_Resource_and_Index_To_Organism_Names on BIOSIS website.

Use the Taxonomy browser at NCBI to find sequences and other molecular information on Polychaetes and other Annelids.

Nomenclature guide: The conventions of usage everyone (yes, everyone) must observe when writing species names.

Book reviews: Is that new annelid book worth your money? Can it be recommended? The critics speak.

• Polychaete Research
  • Find a researcher Links to directories, etc.
  • Introduction to Ward and Fauchald Polychaete Bibliography, the 2nd (1997) edition, (and freely available at this site). An Online search facility is available at the Universität Ulm.
  • Introduction to the International Polychaetology Association
    • IPA Constitution
    • Publications of all Polychaete conferences (IPC's)
    • Authors and Titles of 1992 4th IPC in France
    • 1995 5th IPC in China, Conference report
    • Abstracts 5th IPC 1995: (links to authors, abstracts, and papers published outside of the conference volume).
    • 1998 6th IPC in Brazil, Conference report.
    • Abstracts 6th IPC 1998: (links to authors and abstracts).
    • 2001 7th IPC in Iceland - information and abstracts.
    • 2004 8th IPC in Spain (Madrid, 5-9 July 2004) - information and programme.
    • 2007 9th IPC9 in Maine, USA (Portland, Maine, 12-18 August 2007) - information and programme.
  • Translations of polychaete papers.
  • Polychaete Journals, print newsletters and books.
  • CHAETOZONE, the polychaete e-newsletter, 1994 to 1995. Its role was taken over by the ANNELIDA mailing-list.
  • Polychaete CD-ROM - Ward and Fauchald (1990) bibliography (1st edition)
  • Polychaete images.
  • Biographies, obituaries, life-time publication lists
  • Bibliographies
  • Feeding in Polychaeta: Display for Barrie Jamieson CD-ROM
  • What is it? Identifications sought for polychaete images.
  • Platynereis dumerilii homepage. Resources for scientific research on P. dumerilii. Site by Adriaan Dorresteijn.

• Oligochaete and Leech Research
  • Diversity of exotic earthworms in Australia - a status report by Rob Blakemore (online reprint).
  • 2000: Eighth International Symposium on Aquatic Oligochaetes, July, 2000.
  • 1997: Seventh International Symposium on Aquatic Oligochaetes
  • North American Benthological Society Annual Aquatic Annelida Bibliographies - Mark Wetzel's site link.
  • Earthworms of North Dakota - original research with maps.
  • Illinois Natural History Survey Center for Annelid Resources by Mark Wetzel (see also Mark's home page here).
  • Illinois Natural History Service annelid collection
  • Frequently Asked Questions About Earthworms hosted at Pest Management Research Centre, Canada.
  • Montana freshwater annelids, at D.L. Gustafson's "World Wide Whirling Worm Web". Also a page on Tubifex.
  • The earthworm-eater: planarian Artioposthia triangulata
  • Cluster flies (Pollenia rudis) are parasites of oligochaetes as larvae and a nuisance as adult 'blowflies' overwintering inside North American homes. More information at these external pages: a University of Vermont entomology leaflet, a Penn State University image, and a Virginia Cooperative Extension fact sheet on cluster flies.
  • Biographies, obituaries, life-time publication lists
  • Mark Siddall's Leech pages (index)
  • Leech life history evolution
  • Leech pictures
  • Fredric R. Govedich's Australian leech pages includes a page on the Queensland earthworm-eating leech.
  • Molecular phylogeny of leeches . The leech lab - Mark Siddall again.
  • Leeches are also popular in neuroscience and medicine.
    • Leech News. WWW neurobiology newsletter edited by Chris Sahley.
    • Leech Links at Leech news.
    • Medicinal leech neuroscience lab.
    • Medical leech news stories on ANNELIDA mailing list include: Leeches and arthritis research, and NZ medical leech story, and Those beneficial Leeches again.
  • See also the field-trips page for more oligochaete and leech sites.

• NCBI browser for molecular information on Echiura, and Pogonophora, and Vestimentifera, and Sipuncula.

• Checklist of Software for Field Biologists (Look here first. It's an excellent page).
• Scientific Software of John A. Byers (Useful bits & pieces for some).
• Biological software with an entomological emphasis from the Internet Entomology Index.
• Archives for Biological Software and Databases Around the World (Molecular emphasis)
• Parsimony Analysis Software. A listing from the Hennig Society web site.
• The ordination web page
• Morphometrics at SUNY Stony Brook (James Rohlf).
• Interactive statistical calculations - John Pezzullo's vast meta compilation on statistics resources on the web.
• DELTA (DEscription Language for TAxonomy) by Mike Dallwitz and his team at CSIRO Division of Entomology. A suite of programs exists, the most important to the end-user being Intkey, a powerful interactive identification program. Shareware. Overview here.
• Platypus "A Database Package for Taxonomists." Checklist oriented taxa database, and accessed via 'tree' navigation. Platypus uses an MS Access database. Promised further development at CSIRO apparently stalled after the initial release in 1996. Version 2 is now available (April 2000) for AU $100.

  Specimen database management. Some new programs are available but there appears to be no collections database software specifically for the data of marine invertebrate collections.

• Biota: The biodiversity database manager. Collections management database. For single users ($125) and institutions.
• BioLink: "Integrated software for the collection, maintenance, analysis, application and dissemination of taxonomic, biodiversity and environmental information." An institutional collections management database. BioLink was developed by CSIRO Entomology with the official release of version 1.0 in August 2000 priced at AU $275. BioLink uses the 'tree' navigation style familiar from the checklist program Platypus.
• Specify: Institutional collections management database in first release. Project of the University of Kansas & funding from the U.S. Science Foundation. Successor to the Muse system, & currently free.
• More such programs - many more links at Mauro Cavalcanti's excellent pages.

• Digital Taxonomy resources pages of Mauro J. Cavalcanti.
• International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. The new edition, the fourth code, came into force on January the first, year 2000, and was published in August 1999.
• Taxonomic resources. Various resources on the Net for many animal phyla, an excellent page of links maintained by Tony Rees from the CSIRO Division of Marine Research Data Centre.
• Cladistics introductions: Diana Leigh Lipscomb's page has a basic guide to Cladistics (PDF file), and there is Berkeley's world of cladistics, and also a cladistics glossary by Michael D. Crisp of ANU.
• Institutional codes or codens - Those cryptic letters identifying collections. There are no online lists compiled for Annelida collections as far as I know, but here is a list for icthyologists, and here is access to a list for entomologists. Together those will include many museums with worm collections.