Chiton Stacks is an unreleased software package by Douglas J. Eernisse featuring data for worldwide chiton species.
It was developed mostly between 1987 and 1995, with the addition of some features and plans for
updating in 2001. The pictured card is one of the main "Species" cards in the primary "Chiton Curator" stack. The
card displays information imported from or exported to a spreadsheet format database of the currently recognized
nominal species. There is a separate database for all nominal species, and corresponding "Synonyms" stack,
accessed from the pull-down "Synonyms" menu. Information about the classification of the species in genus and
higher-level taxa (and their synonyms) is also accessed from this menu. The Species card displays various
information about the description of the species (including pop-up "Type Material" and "Comments" fields), its
recorded depth range if available, and citations for geographic range. One or more range map(s) for the species
are dynamically created by clicking on the "Range" button, which uses stored information about which regional
map and coordinates on that map are to be plotted, as accomplished in a separate "Range Maps" stack. Likewise,
clicking on the "Province" button displays as map of the species' type locality together with all other species'
type localities occurring in one of the prepared marine biogeographic province maps. The Species cards can
be sorted and browsed accordingly by the classification employed, by date of description, alphabetically by
genus or species, etc. Recognized fossil species have their own stack with a somewhat different
set of maps. Various reports can be generated, for example, report stacks consisting of indexed bit map images
of all range maps for all species occurring in one or more selected marine biogeographic provinces. Finally,
images available as local files or links to images on the Web can be catalogued for later access with the "Image
Buttons" or "Image List" features. One report option generates a self-contained Web page with all available
Web images, as made available (outdated link removed).