Taxonomic Structure from Randomly and Systematically Scanned Biological Images

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Abstract
Random masks made from twenty-five IBM cards, each perforated with twenty-five randomly chosen holes, were placed over black and white drawings of twenty-nine “species” of Caminalcules and pupae of thirty-two species of Culicine mosquitoes. Black lines appearing through a hole were scored “1,” and empty holes were scored “0.” Similarity matrices were constructed on the basis of matching scores for corresponding masks and holes. The resulting phenograms agreed well with previous numerical taxonomic studies obtained by deliberately looking for and scoring characters. Complete scanning of the entire image also gave satisfactory results, but classifications were not necessarily better than by the random scanning method. Increasing the size of the apertures in the mask degraded the classification somewhat when compared with the complete scans, but it is not obvious that the overall classifications so obtained are worse than those from the complete scan. Some of the problems of scanning organisms for taxonomic analysis and the implications of such work for taxonomy are discussed.