Nuffield Biology: Keys to Small Organisms in Soil, Litter, and Water Troughs

This Nuffield Foundation booklet contains two keys that were designed to be used in Year IV of the Nuffield biology course. They were intended as a rough guide to plants and animals which could be found at different stages of the fieldwork. The first key was provided as a guide to animals found in soil and leaf litter, moss cushions and so on. The key does not enable many species to be identified but only the larger groups to which the animals belong. This does, however, allow most specimens to be given a name of some kind. For reasons of space some groups, especially of insects, were omitted. The second key is much shorter and covers only a few groups of very small plants and animals. These are organisms which may appear in exposed water troughs or other small bodies of water. The number of different kinds to be found is enormous and they vary with the place and the season. The ones which were chosen for illustration had all been recorded by a small number of schools working in winter time. This key is confined to small organisms.