Systematists inventory, study and structure biological diversity as precisely as possible. All this information may be summarized into knowledge bases to perform identification of specimens for new inventories and monitoring surveys, phylogenetic analyses, as well as for biogeographic and ecological studies. A significant increase of this kind of digitized information should be expected in a near future due to the deep social and scientific impact of web 2.0 and the multiple “cybertaxonomy” projects to study global biodiversity and climate change. Nevertheless, taxonomic descriptions need to be readily accessible, comparable, and as unambiguous as possible to be helpful for scientists as well as to be useful for analysis with computers. Computer Aided Identification systems provide users with the resources to relate morpho-anatomical observations with taxon names and to subsequently access other knowledge about the organisms. They are essential for both generators and consumers of biodiversity information.

Xper² offers a complete environment dedicated to taxonomic descriptions management. It assists taxonomists with knowledge acquisition for identification keys and with publication of descriptive data by providing a large panel of tools. For example a set of taxa can be quickly compared in a taxa X characters matrix with colors distinguishing equal, overlapping and discriminating character states. Each piece of content including for example taxon names, characters, and attributes can be documented using texts and images and associated with additional references or external links to keep the source and history of the information. Xper² provides excellent support for automatic on-line publication of descriptive data and free access keys, as well as for exporting of datasets for phylogenetic and systematic research. Xper² version 2.0 focuses on interoperability between systems and can import and export into structured descriptive data format (TDWG-SDD), and export to HTML and Nexus formats.

It is the role of taxonomists to use their expertise to structure taxonomic knowledge and Xper² is a perfect tool to assist them in their quest. The benefits in terms of access to new treatments are endless. Xper² includes several outputs, i.e. interactive free-access key (accessible on-line and/or locally), and it is associated with additional external modules able to generate printed identification keys, diagnoses, descriptions in natural language, or to compute numerical similarities between descriptions.

Xper² is a powerful tool for editing and managing taxonomic descriptions. Users may freely download a Windows™, Mac™, or Linux version in French, English, or Spanish at: http://lis-upmc.snv.jussieu.fr/lis/?q=en/resources/softwares/xper2. Our mailing-list provides users with full support. Users can publish and distribute their work on CD or on-line. With its user-friendly and intuitive interface, Xper² provides an easy way to become an e-taxonomist!