Not enough characters to complete an identification

In some circumstances, you may be unable to use any of the available characters (for example, if your specimen is incomplete), or the program may report that there are no characters that separate the remaining taxa.

If you have used the "Use subsets of the characters" button to exclude some characters, you could try using the button again to include all the characters. Other possibilities are as follows.

If you have used the "Error tolerance" button to allow mismatches between the specimen and the remaining taxa, you could try reviewing the information you have entered, which is displayed in the "Used Characters" (bottom-left) pane. If you can see an obvious error, click on the relevant character. The program displays the box for selecting character states or entering values, and you can change the information you previously entered.

  1. The specimen information that you have entered may be too broad. You can find out which characters separate the remaining taxa by selecting all the remaining taxa, and pressing the "Differences" button in the "Taxa" toolbar. These differences may include characters that you have already used. If so, you may be able to separate the taxa by selecting fewer states or entering smaller ranges for those characters. To do this, click on the required character in the "Used Characters" (bottom-left) pane. The program displays the box for selecting character states or entering values, and you can change the information you previously entered.
  2. The author may have set "reliabilities" of zero for some characters that were considered to be generally inappropriate for use in identification (for example, number of chromosomes). This prevents the characters appearing in the "Best Characters" pane. You can find out whether such characters separate the remaining taxa by selecting all the remaining taxa, and pressing the "Differences" button in the "Taxa" toolbar. If a useful character is found, you can access it by first pressing the "Natural order" button in the "Characters" toolbar.
  3. It may be that the taxa really cannot be separated by the comparative information in the database. Information available via the "Information" button in the "Taxa" toolbar, may help to distinguish them. The information may include descriptions, illustrations, and links to Web pages. The descriptions may contain supplementary free-text information and/or references, in addition to the comparative information from the database.