For those of you who may not know, the liverworts are a group of primitive plants that are overlooked by, well, practically everyone. Despite this, at the feet of almost every hiker in the forest (and sometimes elsewhere) lies a vast mosaic of bryophytes (mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and sometimes the lichens). This rich layer of life, despite being ignored by most humans, holds fantastic diversity for those patient enough to look and in wildlife-barren Taiwan I found that the great variety of bryophytes to be a relief. I always had an interest in these odd little denizens of the understory, but never really knew how to go about understanding them.
Fortunately, I had a template for my course of study. In university I studied entomology and thus spent a great amount of time capturing, identifying, and organizing insect specimens. After repeated exposure to various insect genera through the use of dichotomous keys I soon found that I was able to identify a great many of them, at least to a family level, based simply off the way they generally ‘felt’. Repeated exposure led me to form a gestalt image, a Platonic ideal if you will, of each group of insects and thus allowed me to bypass large chunks of the keys I was using, sometimes allowing me to bypass keys entirely. Many of my peers and I were able to simply look and get a feel for a specimen and then simply use the key or google to confirm. It seems a bit hand-wavy, but really I believe it to be a natural consequence of the human ability to characterize patterns.
This is perhaps enhanced due to the artificial nature of dichotomous keys. Because a key uses a series of anatomical characteristics to identify an organism in question, a person with a sharp memory who makes multiple passes through a key will soon pick up on each of the traits in question. Each of these parts comes together into an integrated whole to compose the gestalt image, which allows them to rapidly look through a mental ‘key’ and quickly determine what family/genus the insect in question might be. So what does this have to do with the liverworts?
Because I do not have much time to collect insects here I instead must base any identifications off of gestalt image alone, which in the case of many small insects can be vexing or impossible. This has led to a decrease in my insect-hunting. Plants, on the other hand, cannot run away quite so easily and thus readily lend themselves to on-site inspection. If one is simply curious and wishes to know what sort of plant it is, a rough family-level identification will suffice. My goal was, and is, to be able to observe assemblages of bryophytes and have a general knowledge of the identities of the constituents.
My only issue was a near complete lack of knowledge. The bryophytes, liverworts in particular, do not hold a particularly dear spot in the hearts of most and are not even as charismatic as the often reviled insects. They also lack the diversity of both insects and flowering plants. Combining all this with their diminutive stature and relative lack of ‘usefulness’ to humans makes finding information on liverworts a bit daunting.
My goal was, at first, simple identification. For this I decided to use Anki, the fabulous software I have been using to study Chinese. Anki is spaced-repetition flashcard software that allows the user to relegate planning the course of study to the software. Each flashcard is shown to the user following a schedule determined by the ease by which the user correctly answers the card, allowing for more efficient memorization. Through this software I was able to learn to recognize thousands of Chinese words and characters in the space of a year with minimal daily effort.
Recognizing Chinese characters hits many of the same concepts as spot-identifying insects or plants. Chinese characters are composed of small components, called radicals, that can be recognized by their distinct shape, akin to insect morphology or plant structure. I have used Anki for a few years now to study Chinese phrases and characters, and decided to apply it to the study of plant and insect identification.
Users can insert images into anki flashcards, which I used to my advantage by adding a large number of flashcards connecting images of a taxon in question to their respective identifications. I am shown daily several pictures of unknown organisms and then need to provide a corresponding identification. These sort of drills teach me, through trial and error, the gestalt image for a given taxon.
Liverworts, though very small, often are not terribly difficult to identify to a family level. The Marchantiales are simple enough to identify to genus based on the appearance of the reproductive organs and thalli. The larger and far more intimidating Jungermanniales, however, are a true beast to grapple with. The leafy liverworts are often quite similar to one another in appearance and related in ways that are taxonomically very murky. Distinguishing them can be a herculean task, with each morphological character plastic and subject to regional variation. In addition, many of the taxa are not stable and often change. Despite this, some level of recognition can allow an observer to distinguish the most obvious families from one another, leaving only a few options behind. This is what the keys are for.
Anki has proved to be an excellent tool to study sight identification. I went from no knowledge 3 months ago to being able to sight identify a good number of liverwort taxa, some to genus. I would recommend it particularly for entomology, where massive numbers of taxa can prove difficult to sort without lots of practice and training. It certainly brought my ID game up to a new level, and I’m sure it can help any other aspiring naturalists out there as well.