Canadian specialist in freshwater crustacean zooplankton taxonomy — exclusively
IdentaZoop is a Canadian business independently owned and operated by Lynne M. Witty, processing freshwater crustacean zooplankton samples from all parts of Canada.
Lynne M. Witty has over two decades of continuous, full-time experience in freshwater crustacean zooplankton taxonomy — among the longest unbroken records of any active Canadian Taxonomist in this discipline.
Every project is processed personally from start to finish — one Taxonomist, no delegation, no inter-analyst variability. This consistency is critical for long-term monitoring datasets where comparability between years matters as much as accuracy within a year.
IdentaZoop is the only known Canadian taxonomy service to pair ZEBRA2 processing with custom Python scripts — delivering results ready for direct analysis.
What I Do
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Species-level identification of Cladocera and Copepoda from Canadian freshwater samples, including invasive species — spiny water flea (Bythotrephes cederstroemii), fishhook water flea (Cercopagis pengoi), and zebra mussel veligers (Dreissena polymorpha) — with full ecological attributes recorded where protocols require.
Six established processing protocols are supported. No project has been turned away due to protocol complexity, and customized methods are available.
High-quality digital microscope images of species encountered are included with every project. See 'Under the Microscope' for examples.
All client data are stored in multiple secure locations and retained in perpetuity.
IdentaZoop actively monitors current taxonomic research and keeps pace with evolving identification and processing protocols used by research agencies across Canada.
See 'Sample Processing' and 'Why choose IdentaZoop?' for more details on services offered by IdentaZoop.
Contact me to discuss your project.
Early contact is strongly recommended — processing time fills up months in advance.