Intro

DARWIN is a software system which allows marine scientists to maintain information for the study of various behavioral and ecological patterns of bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus. The software provides a graphical user interface to access a collection of digital dorsal fin images along with textual information which describes individual animals as well as relevant sighting data. Users may query the system with the name of a specific individual or the entire collection may be sorted and viewed based upon sighting location, sighting date, or damage category. Alternatively, the researcher may query a database of previously identified dolphin dorsal fin images with an image of an unidentified dolphin's fin. DARWIN responds with a rank ordered list of database fin images that most closely resemble the query image.

News

June 21, 2007

A new beta version of DARWIN is available on the download page. This software is still under development so some of its functions have not yet been implemented. Installation instructions and a user's guide are included.

New Features Include:

• Batch-processing of matches
• Custom damage categories
• Allowance for multiple databases and survey areas
• Improved automatic outlining capabilities
• And much more!

- K. Debure

December 9, 2005

A beta version of DARWIN is available on the download page. This software is still under development so some of its functions have not yet been implemented. The tools to create a database and match unknown fins against against it are available. New functionality has been added to automatically generate the outline of a dorsal fin. Installation instructions and a user's guide are included.

- K. Debure

Contact Us

darwin@eckerd.edu