Head, body, and appendages chaetotaxy
Chaetotaxic systems attempt to labeling each chaeta along the body,
where the label indicates a specific chaeta and its position in the body
of the animal, then a qualitative description is made (e.g .
spinelike chaeta, macrochaeta, club shaped sensillum, palmate, serrate,
lanceolate), bringing subjectivity in the interpretation of a specific
chaeta labeling, and by the many different adjectives that can apply for
a given shape, depending on the author.
Here we map regions that can be compared in different taxonomic groups,
the chaetal fields, within each head and body segment (Fig. 1-2), and to
appendages (Figs. 3-5), and refer to a shape for the chaeta in an image
data set, the chaetae bank, with images of each kind of chaeta found in
the taxon (Fig. 8).
The chaetotaxy of individualized chaeta is replaced by a code describing
the total number of chaetae in the chaetal field, and the qualitative
description of the different kind of chaetae found in each chaetal
field, is replaced by the respective number in the chaetae bank that
represents the actual observed shape and size, to compose the
morphological unit definition (see Table 1).