Identification (biology)

Identification in biology is the process of assigning a pre-existing taxon name to an individual organism.

Identification of organisms to individual scientific names (or codes) may be based on individualistic natural body features,[1] experimentally created individual markers (e.g., color dot patterns), or natural individualistic molecular markers (similar to those used in maternity or paternity identification tests).

Individual identification is used in ecology, wildlife management and conservation biology.

The features may, e. g., be morphological, anatomical, physiological, behavioral, or molecular.

[3] Identification methods may be manual or computerized and may involve using identification keys, browsing through fields guide that contain (often illustrated) species accounts, comparing the organism with specimens from natural history collections, or taking images to be analyzed and compared against a pre-trained knowledge base with species information.