20 questions and species identification

Re the problem of how one would use the isopod image database to identify a given bug brought up from sea-bottom, and realized that unless looking at all the images in turn or simultaneously, it would be a random guessing game.

Perhaps a computer-guided back-and-forth bracketing in process could be done via satellite from aboard ship, done by the person with the specimen in hand. (Or maybe a digital camera could send a photo of the critter via satellite for initial evaluation by computer image analysis, then maybe a specialist could further help in the identification of the image.)

So maybe one needs to first start with a series of filters with which to view the found bug/isopod/specimen and first bracket in its morphological features to make better guesses at its taxonomy from the image database. Although, in future if on the spot "barcoding" can be done chemically, then use computer to match the DNA of specimens in database, then as a next step, now having some possible species names, access those in the image database to increasingly confirm its identification. But without that hypothetical chemical on the spot DNA barcoding, using the morphology through filters consisting of "20 questions" kind of activity, recalling the long verbal descriptions in the isopod literature with lots of long strange names of kinds of body parts and their variations, such questions seem to need to be used to be answered by the observer of the actual specimen in question. My boss had mentioned several times, to my almost un-hearing attention, that the sphaeromatid has seven sets of legs with each associated with its segment of the body of the critter. Actually, the set of questions needs to begin even earlier, with a given creature from the ocean, to determine if it is a fish or a seaweed-algae, sponge, worm-echinoderm, crustacean; the crustacean will have a exoskeleton, a hard shell but so does a turtle which is not a crustacean; the isopod is a hard shell critter thus possibly a crustacean per this process. Then count the number of body segments and the number of legs, antennae, location of antennae in relation to the eyes, if it has eyes. The shape of its tail, its pleotelson, could be selected by a series of images showing varieties of such shaped structures. The shape of the legs and the hair-like parts of the legs wold provide grist for more of the question set, ever refined by the computer to come up with ever more detailed possibilities as determined by the path of among possibilities, increasingly bracketing into a likely species, providing the then most likely species names and species ID for the image database, for the explorer to look at and make best guess through image comparison, another form of filter to answer the "20 question" activity, selecting among them for what looks to be the most similar to what the specimen in question is. And this process seems would be able to produce a bracketed set of characteristics that would place it even if it were a new, previously unidentified species.

Back to the DNA barcoding aspect, maybe there are other means for nondestructively examining its chemistry, another input source for computer-asked "20 questions" best-fit by the observer on hand on a boat out in the ocean, with the specimen in hand. Possibly Synchrometer-type biological resonance could scan with single frequency then build on found frequencies to add more simultaneous frequencies to increasingly characterize to specimen's chemistry through bioresonance processes, although right now the instrumentation for that requires considerable operator skill. In summary, it looks to me now that there needs to be prior steps of observation of filter-focused looking for things to examine, such as counting the number of segments of the exoskeleton outer shell, supplying that as answer to current "20 question" filter, then being supplied with another set of filtering questions composed of possibilities remaining from prior answers path reached so far, until all established filter questions have been reached, including that of comparing to the shapes in the image database of which I have been helping to make in my NHMLAC volunteer work.