Benefits

Lucid Phoenix has a number of advantages over traditional paper based identification keys:

• Options for overcoming the traditional short comings of dichotomous keys, namely the “unanswerable couplet problem”. If, for example, the user of a traditional paper based key comes to a question that they cannot answer such as “what is the flower colour?” of a particular plant specimen that is not in flower then the user is stuck at that point. Lucid Phoenix keys can help overcome this problem by "book marking" that couplet, allowing the user to skip the problem couplet and to follow both branches from that couplet to end up with a shortlist of two taxa.  Users can employ this skip function indefinitely.
• Additional enhancements, not before possible with traditional keys, have been added such as filters. Lucid Phoenix allows a simple matrix of character states (such as location) and taxa to be attached to the key. This enables the user to filter out taxa and to produce an automatically generated, cut-down version of the key for that specific species list.
• Lists of taxa remaining and taxa discarded. As users work their way through the key, the matching taxa and discarded taxa lists change dynamically.
• Multimedia capabilities to support users in the process of identification. Lucid Phoenix supports Internet standards such as URLs, GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs.
• Keys can be distributed easily over the Internet; they are embedded directly into a web page.
• Delivering existing paper based keys in a more appealing, interactive way to large audiences.
• Paper based keys once scanned can be imported into the Phoenix Builder within minutes.
• Easy to restructure and add taxa to keys.
• Allows keys to be linked together.

Lucid Phoenix keys have numerous advantages over other attempts at interactive dichotomous keys. Experience the power of Lucid Phoenix by downloading the demonstration version for free or try out some of the example Phoenix keys for yourself.