About the Lucid key | System Requirements | Taxonomic & geographic scope | How to use the key | Best practices | Full screen version
Video tutorial: How to use the Lucid Key for ant identification
The Lucid key is an interactive, fully illustrated identification tool that allows you to diagnose over 100 species of synanthropic ants from across the globe. The key is designed to work most effectively by using the best and next best buttons (the icon on the menu bar looks like a magic wand) . Frequent users might want to review the best practices on occasion to pick up additional tips and tricks. For additional documentation visit the links above. Comments including errors, problems and questions can be posted and discussed below. Remember, native species are not included!
Useful tips > Use 'best' and 'next best' buttons | Use 'prune' button | Stop when you have one species remaining
You must select the "Features Available" window to access the "Find Best" and "Prune Redundants" buttons. Restart the key with refresh button on the far left.
Full screen key
Comments
Comments welcome!
Please post comments regarding any errors you've encountered, suggestions for improvement or questions. Your comments will help make future versions of the key more accurate and easier to use for everyone.
Antennal insertion surrounded by ridge = Tetramorium
The 'antennal ridge present' character pops up too early for myrmicines with 3-segmented antennal clubs. It is a reliable but difficult character to interpret for novice ant taxonomists. It could at least come after 'propodeal spines present'.
This issue has been addressed
This issue has been addressed for the embedded version of the key, but has not been addressed for the full-screen version that is still linked to the ID Tools server (http://idtools.org/id/ants/AntKey_v1.html).
Lucid Key not loading?
If you experience any errors that prevent the Java Lucid Key from loading, please post what the error message was and what operating system and browser you were using. Thanks.
Nylanderia pubens
Workers of Nylanderia pubens will key out identically to Nylanderia fulva. According to Kallal et al (2012), "Workers of the introduced species fulva and pubens cannot be separated based on morphology. For morphological identification males are necessary. For further details see Gotzek et al. (2012)".
HTML codes for greater than and less than
The Lucid key must be updated to correct the html codes or display for greater than and less than. Specifically, check the 'size' character for Solenopsis (> 2mm vs. &le 2mm).
"Your security seeings have blocked an untrusted application..."
The latest Java upgrade is blocking the Lucid key from loading in many situations. To fix this issue you can follow the following instructions (http://www.java.com/en/download/help/java_blocked.xml):
As a workaround, the user can use Exception Site list feature to run the applications blocked by security settings. By adding the URL of the blocked application to the Exception Site list allows it to run with some warnings.
Steps to Add URL to the Exception Site list:
http://antkey.org
How to use the Lucid Key
Here is an example tutorial I put together for how to use the Lucid Key. It isn't comprehensive, but it's worth watching even if you are a regular user.
How to use Lucid Key for identifying ants from Eli Sarnat on Vimeo.