In what fields/activities in biological science would using a key to identify organisms be of great importance

Question

In what fields/activities in biological science would using a key to identify organisms be of great importance

Answer 1

all of them.

Answer 2

Systematists/taxonomists are typically the ones who write keys.  Ecologists and other field biologists tend to be the typical ones using keys the most, but just about every biologist needs to know how to id their organisms.  Or else they have to bring them to the systematists (=taxonomists) for ID.

In the clinical arena, clinical microbiologists, parasitologists and similar groups all use keys.

There is a very old joke among taxonomists with a large grain of truth embedded therein:  "Keys are made by people who don't need them for people who can't use them."  Good key writers try to make their keys easy for others to use.

Answer 3

agree with mavster

Answer 4

Well, knowing how to use an identification key for organisms is important in so many fields of biology, it's too hard to list them all! Certainly, any time one goes in to the field to collect samples for DNA analysis, to characterize the members of a community, study variation within a species, determine whether a certain group was being affected by pollutants, etc. you would need to be able to identify particular species.