Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Archive11

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Archives for WT:TOL edit
1 2002-07 – 2003-12 Article names
2 2003-11 – 2004-02 Taxoboxes
3 2004-02 Taxoboxes
4 2004-02 – 2004-08 Bold taxa; taxonomy
5 2004-03 – 2004-04 Taxonomy; photos; range maps
6 2005-04 – 2004-06 Capitalization; authorities; mammals
7 2004-06 – 2004-08 Creationism; parens; common names
8 2004-05 – 2004-08 Templates; †extinct; common names
9 2004-05 – 2004-08 Categories; taxoboxes
10 2004-08 – 2004-12 Categories; authorities; domains; Wikispecies; ranks; G. species; capitalization; Common Names
11 2004-11 – 2005-05 Capitalization; common names; categories; L.; authorities; algae; cultivars
12 2005-03 – 2005-05 Ranks; common names
13 2005-05 – 2005-06 Hybrids; taxobox format; cultivars
14 2005-06 – 2005-07 Categories; food plants; identification; Capitalization
15 2005-07 – 2005-09 Synonyms; types; authorities; status; identification
16 2005-09 – 2005-12 Paleontological ranges; Rosopsida; Taxobox redesign; identification
17 2005-12 – 2006-04 Taxobox redesign; identification; APG; common names; capitalization
18 2006-04 – 2006-10 Categorization; include in references; snakes; range maps; seasonality graph; common names; bioregions; brya;
19 2006-10 – 2007-03 various

Contents


[edit] Olive family

Should an article like this be at the title Oleaceae which is now a redirect. Some of the species seem pretty far from the common understanding of an olive. Rmhermen 14:10, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

I'd say yes. While it's good to have the article title be a common name, it's not good when that common name is misleading, as in this case. - UtherSRG 14:51, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
ditto. -- WormRunner | Talk 16:04, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Technically, "olive family" is just as accurate as "Oleaceae" - note that a large number of botanical writeups write "olive family Oleaceae" at least on the first usage, which says two things; a) they're synonyms, and b) the "-aceae" names are still not quite second nature to everybody, what the computer nerds would call a "human interface"

problem. :-) But we've signed up with the Latin names. (Might not hurt to have redirs tho, "soapberry family" garners several thousand matches, 600 of them not mentioning Sapindaceae at all.) Stan 17:03, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'd say "yes" to Oleaceae. While I can understand the concern that common names are more familiar to most people, it is not the case that "olive family" should mean "all plants that look like an olive." The terms are, in essence and as notedabove, synonyms; therefore olive family means: "plants related to and sharing specified morphological characteristics with the familiar olive plant." As cladistics advance this becomes "plants related to and sharing a specified genetic similarity with the familiar olive plant." - Marshman 17:40, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] 'Old' style taxoboxes

When I come across a taxobox created with the table code rather than the new ToL template I update it. I'm not sure if people are of the opinion 'if it ain't broke -don't fix it', or if its better to update them to make any subsequent updates simpler. A list of entries with the 'old' template can be found here .--nixie 02:48, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think it's good to make the changes in an ad hoc manner. No need to rush out and change all the taxoboxes at once, but if one happens upon an article and it's got an old format, update it. If one is bored they could pick an article that needs an update taxobox and start there and work up and down the tree as appropriate. I've done that with Canidae and Felidae and with some other mammals. - UtherSRG 14:56, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit]  ! Important ! Kiwi page sorely out of date!

(Posted by new User:Fledgeling on my user page - can anyone help out? I'll have a look in HBW, but I suspect that's not up-to-date enough) - MPF 09:51, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There were tought to be three species and two sub-species untill 1995, when DNA tests on the different Kiwi populations proved otherwise. Today we know that the species formerly known as Brown Kiwi is actually three distinct species – Brown Kiwi, Rowi and Tokoeka. And the Tokoeka currently has two varieties - Haast Tokoeka and Southern Tokoeka. The Rowi was identified as a seperate species in 2003, the latest to be identified as a seperate species.--- http://www.kiwirecovery.org.nz/Kiwi/AboutTheBird/TheKiwiFamily/

I have noticed this page is sorely out of date, but since i only came yesterday i do not have the expertise, 'Wikification' knowlege, or guts to take on the task of editing such a large, prominent peice. Since you listed one of your interests as birds, i was hoping you might be interested in takling this project. You dont have to, of course, but i felt this topic should be brought up

P.S. Is there a better place to put this information?

Thanks 04:11, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Common name capitalization

Back in the spring I was working on some fish articles, and someone moved them all to title capitalization (the infamous one being Neon Tetra instead of Neon tetra). AFAICT this is not mandated anywhere in the ToL pages, and it violates Wikipedia standards about using normal English sentence capitalization for article titles. I was told back then that capitalizing everything was the new standard for ToL. However, from looking around, it doesn't seem like most articles follow this (undocumented) standard. Can anyone help me out? —Tkinias 18:30, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Capitalisation is the agreed standard for birds, with a mandatory lower case redirect. AFAIK there is no agreed stanadard for other groups, although there are some de facto ones, such as cetacean, which are all capitalised. I'm not the most assiduous follower of ToL, so you may be right about caps for everything asa new standard, which I would approve of. Fish in general, though, have been the bastion of lower case common nemes. jimfbleak 19:51, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Maybe this is somewhere ornithologists and ichthyologists disagree? I'm not an ichthyologist, just a hobbyist, but I've never seen all-caps for common names outside of Wikipedia. The OED doesn't, Britannica doesn't, FishBase doesn't, ITIS doesn't, and none of the hobbyist's references I have here do. Where does this "standard" come from? I'm just frustrated with the inconsistency, since I was forced to do something that nobody else seems to be doing, and there seems to be a one-man campaign to force capitalization. —Tkinias 20:10, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I think lower case is largely American (sometimes "american"!} style. All my dozens of bird books use caps, including the NAm ones. The bird agreement was at least two years ago, so I'm not sure that I could easily track it down , althougn I'll try to do so if it's important. It may not be idea, but it seems to be the case that different animal groups have different practices as well as the NAm/other differences. I don't think in practice that standardisation is even possible. For exanmple, there are 2-3,000 bird articles, some of which have species lists with up to 3000 named species. I'm sure a similar situation applies for fish, mammals and plants at least. jimfbleak 20:19, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Oh, I'm not disagreeing on the birds, just saying that generalizing from birds to fish doesn't work. (Even if the cladists tell us birds are really fish *grin*). Oh, and don't tell OED and Britannica they're following American style... —Tkinias 20:27, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There was once a "push to generalize" out from birds to the whole of Animalia from some (including me). However others pointed out it wasn't really appropriate, particularly for fish. I think the best thing to hope is consistency across "large-ish" taxa. Caps for birds (this is an agreed standard), caps for mammals in scientific contexts but don't bother in less scientific articles (this is probably best described as a de facto standard, but I think defensible), no caps for fish (because no-one else does). Pcb21| Pete 23:51, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
OK, thanks for the clarification. I will try to keep the fish I work on consistent with that then. —Tkinias 01:14, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I disagree; I don't believe there is any reason to capitalize common names, unless they include a proper noun or adjective. As mentioned above, this is consistent with the OED and Britannica, as well as standard biology textbooks and indeed any source I've ever come across. I don't doubt the ornithology books, but this practice of capitalizing avian common names does not seem to have been embraced even by the scientific community, not to mention the larger academic community or lay publishing in general. I especially see no reason for capitalizing mammalian names in general or cetaceans specifically. In my opinion it would be simpler and more consistent, both within Wikipedia and without, to use lower case. The fifteenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, admittedly a North American work, has the following to say: "8.136 Common names. For the correct capitalization of common names of plants and animals, consult a dictionary or the authoritative guides to nomenclature, the ICBN and the ICZN, mentioned in 8.127. In any one work, a single source should be followed. In general, Chicago recommends capitalizing only proper nouns and adjectives, as in the following examples, which conform to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary" (the examples given are Dutchman's-breeches, mayapple, jack-in-the-pulpit, rhesus monkey, Rocky Mountain sheep, and Cooper's hawk). Of course scientific names, except for species names, should be capitalized, as CMS also states. I of course understand that individual groups may have separate views about their field of interest, but I advocate a less complicated, more accepted approach. Furthermore, in my opinion, capitalizing common nouns (common as in not a proper noun) in the middle of the sentence looks unprofessional (for instance, "A group of Bottlenose Dolphins, apparently sensing danger to the swimmers..."). Finally, I should mention that it seems quite odd to me that there would even be a discussion concerning capitalization of vernacular animal and plant names. It never occurred to me that anyone would want to capitalize them. I admit I have not read any books specifically on ornithology; however, I have read quite a large amount of scientific literature, in addition to popular literature, and I can think of no examples of this. I know this comment is long, and it is not my inention to offend, but in short, my proposal is this: vernacular names of all plants and animals should be in lower case, unless 1) it contains a proper noun or adjective, which should be capitalized (a dictionary like the OED or Merriam-Webster can help give guidance), or 2) an authoritative source such as the ICBN or ICZN recommends such capitalization. Perhaps a bit broad, but it makes sense to me. What are your thoughts? — [[User:Knowledge Seeker|Knowledge Seeker দ (talk)]] 03:17, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

(Reverting to no-indent...) Naturally, I agree with User:Knowledge Seeker. I note that, unfortunately, the Oxford Style Manual (a UK style manual) gives no guidance on the specific subject of capitalizing common names. OED, of course, does not capitalize them. ICBN/ICZN I don't think concern themselves at all (and from what I've seen avoid mentioning) common names. I note that ICZN docs on their Web site downcase anglicized versions of names of higher taxa -- therefore, "the Centrarchidae" but "this fish is a centrarchid". I've proposed a standard specifically for fish at Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes, but there's not been much response. —Tkinias 03:47, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Addendum: Survey of several on-line taxonomic sources: NCBI Entrez, University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web, Tree of Life Project, and Integrated Taxonomic Information System all uniformly use lower-case common names for taxa of all levels. So do the journals Nature, American Journal of Botany, International Journal of Plant Sciences (just some for which I had easy on-line access). I could not readily determine if Science has a policy on this since I didn't find any unambiguous use in their on-line number. I found no use of capitalized common names in any on-line taxonomic sources I checked. The only use I have seen is in things like bird-watcher' books and aquarium hobbyists' works; apparently capitalization is a standard in specialist ornithological works, but I don't have access to any of that. (Maybe some of our ornithologists could provide journal names which use this standard?) —Tkinias 04:24, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This isn't so much a conflict between American and British/Australian etc usage; it is more a conflict between old-fashioned (what I would regard stick-in-the-mud) dictionary usage, and rather more modern popular field guide usage, with the latter setting the recent trend to capitalisation for excellent practical reasons (as have been outlined here before on numerous occasions; look through the archives). Pretty well all field guides that I have seen, whatever the group (plants, birds, fish, etc, etc) on all continents (including North America) capitalise names, and have done so for 30-40 years at least. The dictionaries are quite simply out of date here (I can also if desired find plenty of cases of dictionaries failing to keep up-to-date usage of e.g. scientific names in their pages; dictionary compilers just don't appear to have a clue when it comes to modern sciences).
How far back field guide capitalisation rules go I don't know exactly, but my parents' old The Observer's Book of Sea Fishes (1958) capitalises all common names fully.
One excellent reason for doing so is uniformity of capitalising in a list, instead of having seemingly random or arbitary capitalisation; uniform capitalisation is on a par with uniform treatment of scientific names (Genus upper case, species lower case), where scientific conventions over-ride traditional grammatical rules.
Another is that there are a large number of cases where determining whether a species name is derived from a proper noun or not is impossible, or at the very least, extremenly difficult to know. Should, for example, Pōhutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa) be capitalised or not under dictionary rules? Or Koyamaki (Sciadopitys verticillata)? Do you know enough Maori or Japanese etymology to say? I certainly don't, and I don't think anyone should be expected to have to find out, either.
Third, and perhaps the most important of all, is that capitalisation helps distinguish the general from the specific. A Common Tern is a particular species (Sterna hirundo), while a common tern refers to any species of tern that happens to be common in an area (where I am, Sandwich Tern is a common tern, but it isn't a Common Tern). - MPF 14:28, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
the lack of amiguity and the standard practice in most bird and cetacean books at least, plus the impracticability of changing all the articles seem good reason for sticking to the caps standard. Isabelline and Pomarine are also descriptors which may not be obviously proper/improper names. jimfbleak 19:21, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
We're not a field guide, though. Encyclopedias do not follow field guide capitalization, nor do dictionaries—it's not a matter of the dictionaries being out of date, it's a matter of the dictionaries reflecting the broad consensus in English-language usage outside of field guides. Chicago Manual of Style has a new edition (2003 IIRC) which has extensively modernized its suggestions, liberalizing many recommendations, simplifying citations, including extensive guidelines for citing Internet sources—and quite clearly maintaining that good usage does not capitalize common names. I don't have a copy of Fishes of the World and haven't bothered since it is so out of date, so I can't speak to its usage, but I can't find any example outside of field guides or informal texts (e.g., hobbyists' books) which use uniform capitalization. Can you cite any refereed journal or reputable encyclopedia, dictionary, or style manual which uses uniform capitalization? I would note, BTW, that liberal use of capitalization for common nouns is in English an archaism much more than it is modern; cf. 18th and 20th century writing. —Tkinias 21:54, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm not so sure we are very different from a field guide; the intention at least is to have an article on each species (some day!), which does make it rather field guide-like. I can also cite several technical books (not field guides) which do capitalise fully (already have, in fact, look back through the archives, it's there somewhere!). And when so many 'reputable' encyclopaedias and dictionaries can't get their scientific names done right, I don't see why we should be bound by their rules :-) . . . go with the people who do know what they're talking about, which is, very often, the field guide authors (who are, by and large, top experts in their fields) - MPF 23:19, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Somewhere in the discussion archive I mentioned a link to some specialists' fish rag that included a column discussing this very same issue. My takeaway was that the issue is still being actively debated for fish. That wouldn't necessarily keep us from making a decision on house style, for instance FishBase made a choice for their own data, but if it turns out the debate is resolved and we chose the wrong side, that's a lot to fix (although not a disaster, mostly automatable). Amusingly, my Fish and Fisheries of Nevada (no, not the world's thinnest book, ha ha, it's 780 pages), originally published in 1962, uses capitalization throughout, but the mid-90s reprint has an additional section by a different author updating species status - and there the names are all downcase! Can anybody top that? :-) Stan 00:31, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ooh, my favorite topic-- and the primary reason I've mostly given up on Wikipedia. This is not a case of US vs. UK English or fuddy-duddy vs. trendy. It's correct vs. incorrect grammar. Many people who have admitted expertise in technical areas (and many others who think they do) show indifference or contempt for the English language. Their arguments are unsound, yet they continue making them, and sometimes "correct" large numbers of existing lower-case titles to suit their whims.
On the plus side. Wikipedia is a great place if you're in the mood for an argument. Mackerm 00:50, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I don't agree with the notion that this has anything to do with correct grammar. When it comes to capitalization, every style guide has a point where they say "it's between the author and editor", or put more crudely, "we're tired of arguing about it, do whatever you want!". I think it's revealing to find these same disputes turning up in the print world, where real money and real careers are involved; it's just a WP issue. Stan 04:18, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I would not call it a matter of grammar, but one of style. From a linguistic perspective, orthographic conventions are not quite the same as grammar. If I write PHeAr mE!, it conforms to English grammatical conventions—it consists of the imperative of a verb, followed by a personal pronoun in the accusative—but it does not conform to the conventions of good written English style. —Tkinias 07:00, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
FishBase made a decision—which happens to be the same one ITIS, Tree of Life, NCBI Entrez, and all the scholarly journals I checked made. And it is also the decision which follows the recommendations of Britannica, OED, Merriam-Webster, American Heritage, and Chicago Manual of Style. I could make a good argument that articles on free software should always downcase program names, pluralize box as boxen, and spell Microsoft as Micro$oft, based on established usage in the field, but that doesn't make it usage Wikipedia should follow. —Tkinias 07:10, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here's a provocative hypothesis; capitalization is preferred by those people who revere the species they're talking about - birdwatchers, treehuggers, field guide authors, and the like, while those who take a more utilitarian view - loggers, fisheries managers, insecticide researchers, etc, tend to prefer downcase. Capitalization has long been a mark of respect - for instance, Chicago specifically notes a habit of authors to "overcapitalize" terms relating to the major modern-day religions, but to do so much less for primitive or ancient religions. OK, now flame away. :-) Stan 04:31, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It's certainly provocative. I'm not inclined to flame; I find that, in the era of cheap asbestos suits, it's not a very useful approach. As someone who seldom encounters anyone who is to my left politically—depending on mood, I can fluctuate from somewhere around Trotsky to somewhere around Bakunin *grin*—I would not lump myself with callous, capitalistic environmental despoilers; I do, however, prefer downcasing common names. It may be a relic of having worked both as an English teacher and as a writer/editor, but I find excessive capitalization aesthetically unpleasing from a typographical perspective (and I think German print suffers, in visual terms, from its capitalization of common nouns). I also find that in modern English text it gives an immediate impression of sloppy editing. Simply put, if I read "ecologists estimate that about fifty Brown Bears live in the region", my assumption is that someone's editor needs a vacation. I understand that others disagree and that their perspective is objectively no less valid than mine, but that is how the usage strikes me. —Tkinias 06:54, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Whistling duck

There is something of an edit war starting with User:Mario and Dario on Anseriformes, Anatidae and the various whistling duck species' pages. I posted the following on their talk page:

I noticed that you made changes to Penguin (new species) and Anseriformes. Usually we follow the taxonomy of Handbook of birds of the world (list available on-line). Where we want to show an alternative view, we normally make it as a comment in the next.
I've done this with the whistling duck, since your change makes it inconsistent with related pages and with Wildfowl of the world. I've left the penguin species for now. On the relevant talk pages, could you please indicate the sources for the proposed changes? Many thanks, jimfbleak 06:31, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hi again. The problem with ITIS is that it is a bit eccentric, and, as a USDA source, strongly linked to one country. Unfortunately, the USA taxonomy is also the one most out of step with the rest of the world, which is why we settled on HBW as the standard source. HBW

Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life

Unfortunately, their only response has been to revert my changes, which I thought were a fair compromise. Any views? Should the relevant pages be protected pending resolution? jimfbleak 06:51, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hmm...unfortunately, my knowledge of ornithology is not strong enough to be able to offer factual support to either side. However, it looks like you have good evidence for your version. What I'd recommend is for each of the pages involved, explain on the article's talk page your reasoning, including documenting your sources if possible. Then go ahead and update the article in line with your ideas, including a statement about alternate views as you did before, if its appropriate (that is, if it's seriously a controversial topic). In your edit summary, I would very briefly explain the edit and make a note to discuss changes in the talk section before making them. If that doesn't work, or if this is too much or unfeasible, then protection may be necessary. Hopefully good documentation and explanation, along with vigilance, will suffice. Also—are there any other ornithologists who can help out here? — [[User:Knowledge Seeker|Knowledge Seeker দ (talk)]] 05:24, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Category and article names

I haven't found any guidelines on this in the project page or in the talk archives, but if it's there just point me in the right direction, please! *grin*

There seems not to be consistency regarding the anglicization of names for higher taxa. Since I'm working on fishes (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes), I'm primarily concerned with them, where the family names are normally of the form Fooidae and the order names of the form Fooiformes, where both derive from the generic name Foous (or Fooa). It is common to anglicize the family name as "fooid", and (less so) the order name as "fooiform". Should articles and categories be using Fooidae/Fooiformes or fooid/fooiform? The Latin forms violate the singular and the English-language rules for article names, but in some cases the anglicized forms just look a bit odd. The plural angicized order names in particular look strange, because they look like misspellings of the Latin forms (Fooiforms for Fooiformes). In most cases, the anglicized systematic names are the only unambiguous English names available (how else, for example, to distinguish Perca, Percinae, Percidae, and Perciformes?). I'd like to do cleanup on this as I go through the taxa, but I'm not sure which to standardize on. What does the ToL community think about this?

One way to handle it might be to use (singular) anglicizations for article names and (plural) Latin forms for categories.

(On a related subject, can one anglicize a subfamily name of form Fooinae as "fooine"—e.g., can one refer to the "percine fishes" for fishes of subfamily Percinae?) —Tkinias 03:18, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm gonna take a whack at this. The preferred article title should be the common English language name for the group. Barring that, it should be the formal taxon name. The anglicized terms can be used casually through the article, and yes, "fooid" and "fooin" are perfectly acceptable casual terms for creatures classified in "Fooidae" and "Fooinae", with acceptible adjectival forms being "fooide" and "fooine". I'd guess the same could be said about "fooiform" and "Fooiformes", but since I primarily work with primates and cephalopods, I don't encounter the -iformes ending very often. Categories are less rigorous and generally less formal. For instance, look at the category tree starting at Category:Primates. On the other hand, there's way many more fish taxa than there are primate taxa, so you'll want someting more than what I've got. lso, I'll probably want to add some finer granularity if all the primate artices are created. - UtherSRG 04:41, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm basing cats on families, since there are sometimes hundreds or thousands of species in an order. (Even some families are pretty huge...) So you would advocate avoiding anglicizations (as opposed to true common names) for both articles and categories? Therefore, we should have Cyprinidae and not Cyprinid, but Black bass and not Micropterus, right?
On the issue of categories being less formal than article titles, I think that all the fish articles should have a primary categorization based on taxonomy, since the structure is quite complex. Having additional categories based on nontaxonomic groups (e.g., "salmon", "trout", "bass", etc.) might be helpful too, though. —Tkinias 18:53, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
You've got it on both accounts. Looks like you've got your work cut out for you. I'll refrain from making any "swimming with the fishes" jokes. Oh, I neglected to mention that the anglicized forms (fooid, fooide, fooin, fooine) can be redirects to the article so that they can be used in other articles without having to resort to the pipe trick or being limited to a particular wording. (E.g. The Uther Fish is a fresh water fooine fish found mainly in Wiki Sea.) - UtherSRG 21:23, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Uther, can you provide some examples of the use of adjectival forms with -ide? I'm digging around ICZN's Web site, and it looks like they use fooid as both noun and adjective (e.g., "a group of tachnid flies"). I can't find any -ide forms in OED either, although -id forms are often there if in widespread use. This is the first time I've come across this noun/adj. distinction. I'm far from familiar enough with the literature to contest this; I'm just puzzled that I've not seen it before. (BTW, isn't the utherfish an utheriform fish of family Utheridae? *grin*) —Tkinias 01:47, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I like the Fooidae/Fooiformes names for articles, with redirects from fooid/fooiform. The -idae/-iformes versions are the most "official" and so preferable, while "fooid" etc are less-formal terms and pretty much only used by scientists, so they don't quite qualify as common names unless your circle of acquaintances is really narrow. :-) Stan 04:46, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I think there may be a few exceptions; the one which immediately comes to mind is cichlid, which is very commonly used for the Cichlidae, and is really a full-fledged common name rather than a limited-use anglicization, but it's not a bad general rule. —Tkinias 19:10, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Common names

I'd like to get a feeling for peoples like or dislkie for the 'always used common names' paradigm. I don't like is for a few reasons:

  1. Common names aren't universal, and it irks me when an article's name gets changed to the USDA PLANTS common name especially when that plants isn't from the US or a significant agricultural or horticultural species there.
  2. The same common name is applied to different species in different countries, like Mountain Ash or wood duck (there is also an Australian wood duck Chenonetta jubata).

I think a better system would be to have redirects to the species or disambiguation pages where a common name applies to many species. Since wikipedia isn't paper an integrated system of cross referencing shouldn't be a problem, nor should updating if name changes occurs. Let me know what you think, and I'll decide if I should take this on to the Village Pump--nixie 04:58, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have been in favor of this for some time. Go for it! -- WormRunner | Talk 06:03, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Um, let's have some of the plant and bird folks weigh in on this one. - UtherSRG 12:46, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'd very much like to go with scientific names for the individual articles, certainly for plants. What Nixie points out is true; it'll also promote accuracy, and add A LOT to the reputation of wikipedia as a serious reference source. Just wishing I'd joined wikipedia before the 'use common names' was settled on! It'll be a huge task to move everything now, but I'll be happy to help do so. Birds, I'm not quite so sure; even some surprisingly high-powered ornithological journals use common names more than scientific names (typically a species is referred to by both common and scientific at the first mention, and thereafter only by the common) - MPF 13:48, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Obviously, this is a never-ending story. We have agreed upon rules in the past, with in the end as golden rule : use your common sense. I agree with MPF. I use the scientific name for the title, unless the common name is really commonly known and indicates univocally the taxon discussed. Anyway, when I use a scientific name as title, I put an eventual common name on top in the taxobox. Scientific names in titles also have the advantage of easily being found by bots, linking the diverse Wikipedias. BTW, have any of you noted that our Tree of Life-articles are being taken more and more seriously by the rest of the world ? For instance, the article on the orchid family Orchidaceae, where I and several others have worked on, is mentioned as reference on On-line orchid references, in the company with the best, such as Kew, IUCN and several other great orchid sites. We have the eyes of the world upon us. Therefore we must have a correct and uniform standard for naming taxons. If the rules of the past don't agree with several of us, then the discussion is wide open again. But if we have to change the rules again, the task of changing the existing articles will be gargantuan. Better think twice. JoJan 14:40, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Certainly it would be a lot of work, but I think it would be worth it. There would still be an occasional name conflict, but far less and with a more rational way to resolve it. Birds seem to be a special case with their "official" common names, but with plants and most animals it would make so much more sense. -- WormRunner | Talk 16:53, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I agree that systematic names would be superior. It would also help sort out the conflict over capitalizing common names in article titles -- and, as JoJan notes, it will help with linking with the non-English Wikipedias. I can usually sort out (with some effort) links to the European languages (with the help of FishBase's list of common names), but there's little or nothing I can do for CJK or Hebrew, for example. We might run into quasi-official opposition, however, as the "use English only" policy is not just a ToL thing, but Wikipedia-wide. —Tkinias 18:38, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
As to the interwiki-links, this is done with the Spybot, operated by Andre Engels. He explained this excellent program at the Wikimeeting in Rotterdam, Holland. Through the linking of this bot, you can get an insight of what others have written about the same subject in their language. I regularly check the French, Dutch and German Wikipedias especially for additional text and eventually photos. JoJan 19:20, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I've come to take a tough line on common names, namely that the candidate name really has to be official and/or the most common across a range of English-speaking groups, which generally means looking at multiple sources, old and new, scientific and nonscientific. For instance, many plant genera seem to be better-known to gardeners by generic names than their traditional common names. On the other hand, fish people seem to have gone to some trouble to make English names for many families, even de-assigning some traditional common names of species in order to make them available. In any case, if there's any doubt at all, stick with the Latin. Stan 05:01, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well perhaps there is no need to lobby for an offical policy change, but when a new page is made mabye the user should post a brief message on the talk page stating why they have used the botanical name and/or giving some indication of how common the common name is (so nooone moves pages to inappropraite names)? And some of the bad common names existing could be moved to their botanical name and a suitable disambig made. Any takers for such a proposal? --nixie 02:28, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Interesting suggestion, but it would look very odd in genera with a substantial number of species already with pages (e.g. pines, oaks) to have some appearing in a different format (it would make their category page look weird, with half listed under O for Oak, and half listed under Q for Quercus). My preference would be to tackle them a genus at a time, and make sure everything in the genus was shifted over to scientific names in one go - MPF 11:12, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I would second MPF's suggestion, take a genus at a time, or work through a family, and move all of them. But I also think a priority should be made toward cleaning up all members of an ambiguity (such as Black cumin) at once. WormRunner | Talk 18:05, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Genera?

What's with Category:Genera? It's almost unused... Was this an aborted idea? Should we have this, as well as Category:Families, Category:Orders, Category:Phyla, etc.? If not, why is the category still there? —Tkinias 00:24, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Aborted. Looks like some cleanup to do.... - UtherSRG 00:42, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Looks like some cleanup's already been done ;) —Tkinias 01:31, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There is still Category:Plant families --nixie 02:15, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Ugh.... I ain't gonna touch that yet. - UtherSRG 02:26, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
What's with the "ugh"? I find it quite useful myself, and I note that other language WPs have a similar category, so it's not just some flaky Stan idea. In general, I've been disappointed at the lack of creativity in using categories as other than a poor imitation of the ToL structure. For instance, Category:Plant families includes some obsolete families not linked into the ToL at all; without the category, those articles would likely be overlooked. There are even more orphaned plant orders, I was planning to create a Category:Plant orders to organize all those. Stan 04:03, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I would be a bit leery of using the term "family" to refer to groupings that are no longer considered families... but I think it may be useful to have non-taxonomic categories for things that people mentally group together. Things like Category:Salmon or Category:Aquarium fishes may supplement (but not supplant) taxonomic categories. I'm sure there are other fields where they might be useful, too. —Tkinias 06:46, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Technically, as human constructs, they still exist, it's just that you'll only see them in older works. One of the uses I imagine for WP is as a reading aid for scientific literature; if I see a cryptic reference to "Utheraceae", and both APG and Cronquist disavow any knowledge, what do I do next? WP should at a minimum define all these and explain both who/why introduced and who/why abandoned. One can imagine a Category:Former plant families to collect all these at some point. Stan 00:57, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Gah! The "Uther Fish" has been reborn as a plant! You make a good point, Stan. It's much better than Category:Genera, though. - UtherSRG 01:25, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)
I don't know much about how it works in botany, but for obsolete fish taxa redirects seem to work fine. If there used to be a family of Utheridae, it had a type genus Utherus which had a type species Utherus vulgaris; assuming that U. vulgaris is now among the Fooidae, Utheridae can be a redirect to Fooidae, which page ought to mention that the utherids are now part of this family. Presumably for the Utheraceae, it would be appropriate for Utheraceae to be a redirect to wherever the Utheraceae (or their type) currently reside. Do the obsolete families really need articles? (Not contesting, asking out of ignorance.) —Tkinias 06:34, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'd guess families that have only recently been made obsolete, like e.g. Taxodiaceae, do need articles explaining why they became obsolete, as people who don't yet know they have become obsolete may well be looking for them. It'll have to be done on a case-by-case basis, depending on the amount of literature around that uses the old family - MPF 11:27, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
(I am *not* obsolete! *grins*) Do they need an artcle or a mention in an article? Primate taxonomy, particularly the New World monkey families gets moved around every couple of years. As such, I have the now defunct families mentioned in the classification where they reside (see Atelidae, Cebidae, Callitrichidae). - UtherSRG 11:54, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)
In the case of the Taxodiaceae, it seems that they can be handled by a mention at Cupressaceae that "these genera used to comprise family Taxodiaceae", also noting about Sciadopityaceae. I don't think using a redirect would make them much harder to find, since a search on "Taxodiaceae" would then pull up Cupressaceae.
BTW, is there an anglicization for these plant family names? Biologists use "cyprinid", for example, as an anglicization of Cyprinidae; does that work for something like Cupressaceae?
Oh, and the utherfish lives on, it's just a fooid now ;) —Tkinias 19:06, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Phooey! - UtherSRG 19:11, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)
There are anglicisations for plant families, but they tend to refer back to the naming genus - "Mallow family" for Malvaceae, or "Spurge family" for Euphorbiaceae. I find them annoying and often unhelpful (I know Euphorbiacae, but what's a "Spurge"? Some new useless info for me to memorise, and I suspect when you tell it to students they simply nod, not really knowing what a Spurge is either). On the other hand, anglicisations like "Euphorb" is fairly common, but trying to come up for one for the Myrtaceae is more difficult - Myrtac? (I think Gentry used to use names like that). Where they are easy to say - Euphorb, Rube, Bignon - they get used in conversation. But in writing? Sometimes, but not all that often would be my feeling (based on no data at this point in time). Guettarda 20:58, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Must admit, I know well what a spurge is, but have never heard of "Euphorb" before! - MPF 23:58, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
O-K... I feel dumb. Lulled by people talking about ideas in systematics which went beyond my knowledge. I am talking about "common" names in an ecology/systematics crowd (and even there, you have to explain the most basic thing to those poor zoologist). Worse yet, tropical. But I'm glad that people know what a spurge is (I don't, though I realise I could look it up in a couple seconds on wikipedia (just need to add the link and see where it goes!) So when I was talking about "common names" I was talking about the use of common names for families in a very "in" crowd...I suppose I need to talk to some people without graduate degrees in plant biology a little more. I think I should stick to editting Trinidad and Tobago politics - I'm not going to embarrass myself there by saying such dumb things. On the plus side, I won't feel so dumb using phrases like "the Mallow family" or "the Spurge family" if there is a good chance that the undergrads I am talking to will have heard of these things. I always felt I was adding spurious information that confused more than it helped. Guettarda 00:49, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
So spurges are plants in the geus Euphorbia. I see. (The next words out of my mouth were almost: then why don't people call them Euphorias to keep it simple. Mind if we call you Bruce just to keep it simple). Yes, I obviously desperately need sleep. Guettarda 00:56, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Expressions like "mallow family Malvaceae" (4,500 Google hits for that exact phrase) are so common that they seem almost like formulaic recitations. Perhaps an old horticultural habit dating back to the introduction of scientific farming in the 18th/19th centuries? Has to have been at least a century since "mallow family" carried any special explanatory value over "Malvaceae". Stan 07:00, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think that, for plants, some of the diminished value of the common names for families is related to the fact that few people outside farmers, botanists, and amateur gardeners know squat about plants these days. I would be willing to be that you could stop a dozen people on the street in any American suburb and none of them could tell you whether a tomato is more closely related to a bell pepper or a zucchini—or even whether peanuts and almonds come from the same kind of tree. ;) In that context, "mallow family" might as well be Latin. —Tkinias 09:37, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] L.?

Was there ever consensus on using "L." for "Linnaeus, 1758"? —Tkinias 01:58, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

L. works for Linnaeus and should be standard in citations; you must supply the date (I think that is not presently part of the "standard" in Wikipedia Botany articles, but I could be wrong) - Marshman 02:10, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm not sure of the employment, since all the sources I've seen fully write out "Linnaeus, 1758". Is this perhaps a botany thing not used in zoology? —Tkinias 06:33, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Indeed, this is a botany 'thing'and it can get more complicated than this, because to be complete you also have to name the publication (in abbreviations) where the original publication took place, plus the year of valid publication. And if you want to be really complete, you have to name all the synonyms in the same manner. The name of the author can then be found at IPNI, author search. Luckily, many authors are already included in List of biologists and a link can be made. JoJan 07:24, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
OK, I'll stick with "Linnaeus, 1758" for ichthyological articles then. I make sure that authors' names are always wikified, and I try to make sure there's a X (taxonomy) redirect when we have an article on the author... Thanks! —Tkinias 17:57, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yes, zoologists do traditionally include the date, botanists generally not. The "complete" form of which JoJan speaks would be for published taxonomic articles only. And that is the date of the publication of the species description, so 1758 will not apply in all cases. - Marshman 20:58, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Just to confirm, yes, Linnaeus, date in zoology and L. in botany. Jo - if you don't find a particular botanist's name at List of biologists, try List of botanists or Category:botanists instead; I've been adding a fair number of botanists there without realising there was also a List of biologists to add them to, too. Anyone fancy reconciling the lists so they match?? MPF 23:07, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Like List of people, List of biologists is probably too broad to maintain without some kind of automated aid (collect cats/subcats into raw list, compare to hand-formatted list). Isn't there some kind of master list of 35,000 botanists and their official abbrevs? We should get that list, would make a nice new collection of red links to fill in... :-) Stan 00:46, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The list is: Authors of Plant Names. Eds. R.K. Brummitt & C.E. Powell. Kew: Royal Botanic Gardens, 1992, reprinted 1996; ISBN 0-947643-44-3 (cost GBP24, about USD40). For more details, see the top title at this page: [1]. Once you know the surname of an author, you can enter it into the IPNI author index to get the abbreviation: [2] - so you don't really need to buy the book any more MPF 01:01, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC) (PS you can even find me in there, too :-) - MPF 01:07, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
And when that list is created, how about the zoologists (and the specialties of primatologists, teuthoogists, etc...) - UtherSRG 01:03, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)
The List of biologists has, so far, being kept up-to-date by me and several others. It includes the list/category of botanist, zoologist, ornithologists and naturalists. Most entries are little more than a somewhat longer stub, but several biographies are rather detailed. I would advise, if anyone of you has the intention to write a biography of a botanist, to include his official abbreviation, such as Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach, Rchb f. (= Reichenbach filius), or C. S. Rafinesque, Raf. JoJan 14:52, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Agree fully. I've been starting to use the format "The standard botanical abbreviation Schltdl. is applied to species he described", so as it becomes clear whether the abbreviation includes a fullstop or not - MPF 16:04, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I wish biologists followed some rhyme or reason.... I believe I've seen one author cited in 4 different ways. - UtherSRG 02:38, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
Sounds like you wish Wikipedia had just one style. There is really no problem with citing the same author four different ways if the citation is, in fact, correct. Only editors wandering around would even notice. The users could care less as it is the information they are likely to be interested in. As we find a preferred "style", the 3 other ways can be brought into line. - Marshman 04:13, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
No, I mean in the literature. Makes it difficult to know if they are the same people or different people with the same last name. - UtherSRG 04:23, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
Oh. I think that is why there is the directory cite by MPF above. But aside from individuals differences, each journal can have its own style. Then when we get into web pages...well. But without initials, or an "official" abbreviation, you really need to rely on subject matter. Within a field, it is generally known who is publishing what, and if last name confusion is an issue, one or more initials are appended. Also helpful if date is there (Smith, 1812 is unlikely to be same person as Smith, 2004) - Marshman 05:04, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
That directory is for botanists. I'm talking zoology. Particularly confusing are sons who follow in their father's line of work, such as the Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires, Isidore (1805-1861) and Etienne (1772-1844). The younger was doing work before his father died, and they both worked broadly in the zoological spectrum. Sometimes their first name or first initial is used, sometimes the attribution is ambiguous. Given this ambiguity, I'm wary of any citation by last name alone, even with a date. - UtherSRG 05:23, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
Add Alphonse and Henri Milne-Edwards, French brothers and both zoologists, to the list of authors who are not always well discernable. - UtherSRG 20:20, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
Ok, I've gone through and created a list of citations that could at least use a full name accounting, even if an article isn't written about them for awhile. (Some of the names are for folks who've named a species in the last decade, although most are far older than that.) In the process, another user was able to identify one, while I was bale to find another by using the Wiki search. However, many don't have even first initials to go by, and some their last names are so common that the Wiki search isn't helpful. If anyone can identify even a few of the list, that would be great! - UtherSRG 20:20, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Taxobox style

Taxobox style discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Taxobox Usage#Style. - UtherSRG 22:18, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Bush, Bush (disambiguation)

The current setup is that bush is a redirect to shrub, with all the various other meanings (including Australian bush (habitat) and the Bush family) detailed at bush (disambiguation). The latter has almost no pages pointing to it, while most of the pages pointing to bush are referring to one of the meanings other than shrub. I think it would make sense to move the contents of bush (disambiguation) to bush and then deleting bush (disambiguation) as an unnecessary duplication. Anyone any thoughts? (also posting this at Talk:Bush (disambiguation)) - MPF 12:19, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. One thought - with the exception of the surname, are there any meanings that stand out as prominent? - UtherSRG 12:29, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)
Bush as Australian and NZ habitat types are the ones that stand out to me, after the surname. I suspect they merit pages of their own as well? - MPF 16:04, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Herb, Herb (disambiguation)

This page is a bit of a mess, perhaps it should become an actual disambiguation, and herb be broken into herb (culinary) and herb (botany) --nixie 02:22, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There really is no botany article. "Herb" is short for herbaceous plant, a dictionary definition at best. It is pointless to spilt things up to create numerous permanent stubs. Rewriting the existing article to be less of a "mess" would, IMHO, be a contribution. - Marshman 04:13, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Viruses again

Virus classification follows the same general lines as that of cellular organisms, and it is worth representing with taxoboxes. However, it isn't and can't be phylogenetic, because viruses probably don't have a single common origin separate from other groups. Since modern systems are generally phylogenetic, they leave viruses out, and I don't really think it's appropriate to add them back in.

In recognition of this, I'd like to suggest we adopt a slightly modified taxobox as a standard for viruses. Here's the idea:

Siphoviridae

Virus classification
Group: Group I (dsDNA)
Order: Caudovirales
Family: Siphoviridae
Genera

Genus 1
Genus 2
Siphoviridae
image here
Virus classification
Group: Group I (dsDNA)
Order: Caudovirales
Family: Siphoviridae
Genera

Genus 1
Genus 2

This differs from the table currently on Siphoviridae, which is typical of those that have been added - it doesn't recognize a kingdom Virus, and makes it clear the classification of viruses is separate, but should still make them easy to navigate. If people like the idea, I would add a few new macros to handle the changes. Does anyone have any opinion on this? Josh 07:04, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In theory, I have no problem with this and can support the creation of the templates needed to support a viribox. However, what does the literature show? Does this change reflect a divergence from what someone would expect to find, or would this bring our viral articles more in line with the existing expectations. If it diverges, does the change help the user more than the divergence hinders? - UtherSRG 12:43, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Well, on-line lists and databases don't seem to give any formal taxa for the higher rank groups. In fact, sources like Virus Taxonomy say group rather than class - I've changed it in the table above - while most don't bother treating those categories as anything more than descriptions. So I suspect this reflects the current literature. Josh

Then I can't think of an objection. I've tweaked the viribox: Un-italicized the order and family names, and tweaked the group entry. Will there be a genera descendant section? Is there any other pertinent and easily uantified data that could be put into the viribox? Perhaps there should be a Wikipedia:WikiProject Viruses to handle the deviations from the ToL standards. - UtherSRG 19:05, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Both descendant taxa and images are possibilities. Orders and families should be italicized - apparently the ICTV decided to diverge from the other taxonomic codes on this point. See for instance this letter. As for extra fields, hosts are a possibility, but I would let WP Viruses worry about that if and when there's sufficient interest. It's easy to add things; for now I'd just like to get a standard out. Josh

Understood. Ok, tweaked some more, adding the image and descendants sections. - UtherSRG 20:49, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
Ok, I've made up a couple additional templates and made a mock-up that looks fairly close to the purely HTML version we've been working on. the diffrences from the standard taxobox are:
I'll make the other group entry templates if this mock-up doesn't meet any objections. - UtherSRG
I've moved taxobox_virus_placement to taxobox_begin_placement_virus. It's a little verbose, but I think we should have the begin and end tags match. Besides that, everything looks good, and I'm going to start putting it on the virus pages. Even if there are further changes, it'll make things easier to change via computer. Josh

Then the Virus classification page needs to be updated by someone knowledgable. That letter [3], and the article it refers to [4] would be good references. 68.81.231.127 00:15, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Automatic generation of higher taxonomic groupings

Is there a way that we could give Wikipedia a true "tree of life" via something similar to the category system? What I mean is, could we find a way to tell Wikipedia, for example, that all primates are in class Mammalia, that all mammals are in phylum Chordata, and that all chordates are animals? A taxobox would then simply specify an organism's place in the tree, and Wikipedia could automatically fill in higher classifications. I attempted to implement this feature as a test in my userpage at User:Nighthawk4211/sandbox via the {{}} syntax, but couldn't get it to work reliably. If we could create such a feature, it would make the tree of life much easier to maintain. Nighthawk4211 16:17, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

Nighthawk4211, I love you and want to have your children. I don't know why I didn't think of this before. I just did my own test at User:Tkinias/Taxo_test and it works beautifully. The only problem is that there are some caching glitches which cause recursive templates not to be updated properly sometimes, but that is an issue with the server software, not with your idea. (I got around it by misspelling the last template inclusion, saving, loading the page, then correcting it and reloading, forcing the server to regenerate the last-stage inclusion.) I move that we work to set this up immediately, because it will make maintenance much easier—and with this I can change my mind about whether to include suborders, superfamilies, etc., without having to redo entire families' pages. —Tkinias 19:52, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I just put together some templates of the form Template:Taxon:Phylum_Chordata, and used them in Centrarchidae, Lepomis, and L. auritus. They work great! —Tkinias 20:09, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Certainly shortcuts like this can sometimes be handy, but sometimes one will want to include intermediary taxa that these shortcuts won't have. The point of the current set of taxobox templates is that they are a balance between flexibility and maintainability. By going to shortcuts, you increase maintainability by decreasing flexibility. - UtherSRG 23:21, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)
I guess my thought was that if, for example, we decided that it is important to include Percoidei between Perciformes and Percidae, it would be easier to edit one template than all the (several hundred) families, genera, and species in Percoidei. There's no reason, of course, that a taxobox couldn't be constructed the way it is now if the standard hierarchy didn't work for some reason. Can you think of a reason not to use this approach for large taxa (I'm thinking in particular of the insanely huge Perciformes), so that all the articles are consistent in what intermediate levels they use? For that matter, I think this approach could give more flexibility, if we can autogenerate superorders for fishes; they are omitted as unstable now, but if things can be rearranged easily (by editing order templates) we can include them now. Can you explain in more detail what the drawback to using these, at least within a subproject like fishes, would be? —Tkinias 23:33, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In most cases, intermediate groups aren't just omitted because they're likely to change, they're omitted because they tend not to be standard. Subkingdom Metazoa, for instance, appears on a number of pages but really isn't more common than kingdom Metazoa or subkingdom Bilateria - it tells you more about one particular system then about most groups.

This doesn't apply so much to the suborders of the Perciformes. However, many editors don't bother checking for alternate systems, so don't distinguish between the two cases. As such, it makes sense to have policies that err on the side of caution. I think the placement template idea is reasonable, if we're careful with it. In particular I would strongly urge limiting them to the major ranks. Then, we can still give intermediate ranks on pages that need them:

Perciformes template, including major ranks down to order
Suborder Percoidei
Family Cichlidae

Without putting them on pages that don't really gain anything from them:

Cichlidae template, including major ranks down to family
Genus Pterophyllum
Species P. scalare

There's one other caveat, though. For this to really work well, there needs to be some way to chain these together. Otherwise, I'm not sure copy-and-paste plus scripts aren't a better option. After all, a change in higher ranks still needs to be relected on all the lower rank templates. Has there been any development towards nesting templates? Josh

What I've put together already uses nested templates; they seem to work OK. Thus, if the world turns topsy-turvy and the Centrarchidae become Cypriniformes, only one change need be made and all the articles under Centrarchidae will automatically be updated. Basically, the genus template includes the family template, which includes the order (or suborder) template, etc. —Tkinias 02:20, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ah, I missed that. Ok, then, I think that's an excellent system and I'd support adopting it for article-rich groups - although I don't really have much involvement with those. Thinking about it, I suppose restricting the templates to stable ranked taxa isn't so useful. What we'd want is for them to cover large, recognizable, and compositionally stable clades that may change position. So maybe templates for things like Percoidei is the way to go, although I'd still leave them out of the display. Josh

Hmm. That might be ideal, but we have the problem (at least with fish taxa) that the name changes if the rank changes, so that Centrarchidae if it were subsumed under another family would become subfamily *Centrarchinae. (For the Percoidei in particular, mention is very useful because there are 156 genera and some 7000 species in the family, and several of the suborders are quite recognizable—e.g., the Gobioidei are very different from the Percoidei.) —Tkinias 04:41, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't think that sort of problem can be helped in general, but at least we'd be safe against lateral moves, and it isn't such an issue with larger groups. Further, despite the discussion above, I'd like to note that sometimes common names are the better option. Dicot is a safer bet than Magnoliopsida. Josh

[edit] Higher taxa and authors

It's been vaguely bothering me that the taxobox format has no place to put the author for genera, requiring that it go in the main article text. (I use: "Lepomis Rafinesque, 1819, is a genus of freshwater fish..." to start the articles.) I'm not sure exactly how it would be put into the taxobox, though... Ideas? Would it be good to have genera's authors in the taxoboxes? If so, how? —Tkinias 20:19, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea. This is really something that applies to all higher taxa. I think saying things like Amoebozoa Lühe 1913 emend. Cavalier-Smith in mid-sentence is a little confusing to non-biologists, so I've been putting the attribution in a history section when I can, as on that page. But the taxobox would be a better place and, after all, we give authors for species.

Eared Sunfish
Scientific classification
Family: Centrarchidae
Genus: Lepomis
Genus name
Lepomis
Rafinesque, 1819
Species

L. macrochirus
L. marginatus
L. gibbosus
etc.
Eared Sunfish
Scientific classification
Family: Centrarchidae
Genus: Lepomis
Rafinesque, 1819
Species

L. macrochirus
L. marginatus
L. gibbosus
etc.
Lepomis
Rafinesque, 1819
Scientific classification
Family: Centrarchidae
Genus: Lepomis
Species

L. macrochirus
L. marginatus
L. gibbosus
etc.

Here are some options (incidentally, the taxoboxes have aligning funny ever since they were switched to wikitable format, so I think somebody with a script should change them back).

  • The left table is the most consistent with how we currently treat species. The order of the boxes could be shuffled, but it's kind of redundant. I get the idea that most people like the binomial name boxes because they fill the space for the subdivision box, so this might not be the best option when it's present.
  • The middle table is based on an alternate idea I suggested for giving authors of species. It was marginally less favored than the current system (see /Archive10), but we might consider using it for genera and the like.
  • The right table is another option. It would require using the scientific names in all taxoboxes, mind, but I think that sort of makes sense anyways. The common names could still be used for the articles.

So those are my ideas. Like any of them? Josh

I happen to be one of those evil Latinizers ;) so I like #3, but since I don't foresee such a big change happening soon, my choice would be #2, as it looks cleaner to my eye. —Tkinias 18:51, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
(How do you mean aligning funny?) I like the middle one best. It would cause the least change to the existing boxes and format. The first adds a new section, and the last would require all boxes to be titled with the scientific name - a 180° change from the existing standard. - UtherSRG 18:55, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)
How do you mean aligning funny? - they deal with whitespace poorly. If there's a paragraph break after the taxobox the article gets shifted down, as on cyprinid and many other articles. This didn't happen with the HTML tables. Also, if there's no space between templates, they don't work. This broke a few bacterial pages, and I don't know if there are others like them. Since the difference between tables is supposed to be neutral, I'd change back.
I've added the applicable template to the middle entry. - UtherSRG 19:13, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)
And now I've made a modification to make it more flexible, but I'd like to make the gap between the taxon and the authority smalle for boxes #2 and #3. - UtherSRG 19:32, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

I see you've started using listing authorities on a number of pages. I've changed the entry templates for major ranks so they align better. However, I'm not sure what we have here is really ready to use. There's a lot of variation in how authorities are given. For some large groups it's important to note they've changed signficantly since the original authority, adding things like emend., stat. nov., etc. Multiply that by the different variations we need for the binomial section, and I think you get too many templates.

It would be much better to have a single template that takes a single argument, within which we can place the author, date, and any notes and brackets the circumstances might require. On the other hand, I think it might be worth creating new entry templates, like taxobox_genus_authority. The templates would be slightly harder to maintain, but it would make the articles simpler, since we wouldn't have to worry about newlines breaking spacing everywhere. What do you think? Josh

I needed to see how the change would look after time, and it's grown on me, so I'm glad I had gone ahead and used it in all the cephalopod and primate articles. But yeah, I think we messed up way back when we started this whole template usage. We shouldn't have made the author and date seperate, and I'm carrying that mistake into the new template. I've never used a bot so I don't know all that is involved in fixing things to be more correct, but I think a bot is the only reasonableway to fix things now. I think there should one authority template that works for all uses (zoology, botany, parens, higher taxon, etc.). Like with the conservation status templates, I think it's better to use new line tags than to incorporate templates into each other; to do so would multiply the number of templates to maintain and for editors to sort through to find the one they want. - UtherSRG 12:50, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What's a fish?

A while back, I posted a query at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fishes asking what taxa the project should encompass; nobody responded. What does the greater ToL gang think? Should Fishes be restricted to the Actinopterygii, or should it include other taxa that people think of as "fish"—like the Agnatha, for example? —Tkinias 23:35, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't see any reason the projects need to conform to the specific hierarchy. People interested in Actinopterygii and Chondrichthyes are going to overlap to a great extent, and I imagine many concerns would apply to both groups. So why not cover both? Josh

[edit] Family (biology) and its kin

I'd like to decide what to do with these mostly duplicate pages. Please see Talk:Scientific classification. Josh

[edit] abbreviated genus name in redirect

There is a page V. unguiculata which is a redirect to Cow bean. I recommended it for deletion (Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion) but the only comment so far has been to keep. Perhaps some of you would like to add your comments. -- WormRunner | Talk 23:50, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you. I've also updated the cow bean article. - UtherSRG 00:34, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)
I also agree. Silly to keep as a redirect or anything else here - Marshman 01:18, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I would disagree unless you're a specialist or unless you know of another V. unguiculata that can cause confusion. E. coli and C. elegans are examples where the abbreviation is used more frequently than the nonabbreviated Latin binomial and should (are) existing redirects. There is certainly the possibility that a certain abbreviation is in very common usage among some circles particularly for model organisms: P. maniculatus = Peromyscus maniculatus, X. laevis = Xenopus laevis, T. confusum = Tribolium confusum, but these might not be as widely known. There's still a very good chance that someone might be reading something where the author refers to T. confusum or C. elegans without doing the appropriate thing and defining the full genus before abbreviation. Then the person goes to wikipedia to figure out what a T. confusum is. That sort of abbreviation without defining is really common among the medical researchers, geneticists, and such. That said, I don't know anything about cow beans, but they do seem like the sort of plant where V. unguiculata might be a common enough usage to warrant a redirect. If there's another V. unguiculata in moderately common usage then that would require either a disambig or create confusion and would not be worth the trouble of having a page exist. --Aranae 06:38, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

E. coli I've heard of. It's been in the news. They're in our gut. C. elegans I have a passing knowledge of - something to do with how their nerves cluster the way small world phenomena works. And I only know that because I've read (and poorly editted) that article. I've never heard of V. unguiculata, nor any of the other organisms you mention. I could attempt to spell out what the E. in E. coli stands for, but can't for the C. in C. elegans. While latin name usage has become more prevalent for plants due to the extreme variability in their common name usage, I wouldn't have known V. unguiculata was a plant if WormRunner hadn't spelled that out clearly. Even E. coli is spelled out when usage reasonable allows. Unless the organism is known most commonly by the abbreviated latin name outside of the sphere of interest of that organism, the abbreviation should not be used until after the spelled out form, so as to reasonably prevent ambiguity. - UtherSRG 07:40, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure how it ended up at cow bean (since noone as far as I can see uses that name), but the common name for the species is cowpea. Cowpea currently redirects to Vigna, I think that it'd be best if the species article had the correct name so I'm going to move it to cowpea.--nixie 22:48, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] cleanup

Discussion moved from project page:

  • Acetabularia_crenulata - some alege; the page was blanked by the anon who contributed it, but, assuming it's not fake, it looks like a fine stub. Please look over, verify, and revert to the stub status. JesseW 02:58, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • I added a taxobox and some links to external sources. GPHemsley→◊ 06:13, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Image Categories

It's often very difficult to tell what images of a group are available. I think we should have a hierarchy of image categories, generally paralleling the hierarchy of article categories, but only splitting when there are enough images to make it worthwhile. Examples so far:

This would also solve the problem of cluttering articles with images simply because they have nowhere else to go. To work well, it means the images should have sensible, readable names, and the image page should contain a reasonable description with a link to the relevant taxon. I would like to makes these part of the ToL standard, if nobody has any suggestions or objections. Josh 18:40, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

De nada, Josh. I *like* to revisit all of "my" primates. I would suggest, though, that squid → cephalopod, since that's the organizing WikiProject they are in. (Although I'm also thinking of subcategorizing the images in parallel to the existing article categorization schemes for "my" projects....) - UtherSRG 19:09, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

Ideally there should be Category:Cephalopod images, with subcategories for groups that have enough pictures to warrant it. Right now that probably means squids, but not octopuses. Incidentally, Reef2063.jpg is a terrible name for an image of an octopus, and we should move such things. Is there any way to do that without re-uploading? Josh

Recatting looks good to me. Nope, there's to way to rename an image without re-uploading it. - UtherSRG 20:06, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)
Are you aware of Wikipedia:List of images/Nature? You can explain the contents of the gibberish file names only by using lists or creating special categories. For example, the mysterious Image:Anim0830.jpg would be in Category:Pantropical spotted dolphin images. Nevermind, Wikimedia Commons is going to replace both the projects. You could make your own less redundant by categorizing and later concetrating on non-free images. -Hapsiainen 02:59, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Algae

I am overhauling the algae taxonomy, mostly based on a series of publications in the October 2004 Issue of American Journal of Botany. Can someone take a look at my sandbox and tell me what they think? http://www.amjbot.org/content/vol91/issue10/ - AMJBot Onco p53 07:53, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, would anyone have any objections to listing the red algae as part of the kingdom Plantae? Then they would include all organisms with primary chloroplasts. Now that phylogenetics supports the notion that these make up a clade, this definition seems to be increasingly common. Josh

I am a big supporter of phylogenetic classification so it gets my vote. Onco p53 03:41, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
An overhaul of the red algae seems to be in order. A history of the taxonomy of the red algae would be a great help to the interested reader. As to the sandbox on the green algae, this looks fine to me, except the mentioning of Kingdom : Plantae or Chlorobionta. There is no explanation or definition for Chlorobionta. I thought, but I'm certainly not an expert in the matter - just an interested reader, green algae belonged to the Kingdom Plantae. Where does this 'or Chlorobionta' comes from ? There is no explanation. In the whole ToL, I don't think there is another taxobox stating : X belongs to Kingdom Y or Z. This point should certainly be tackled. But you have my full support for overhauling the algae articles. In view of all this new research, this could put the Wikipedia articles in the forefront of related scientific articles. JoJan 12:52, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with JoJan, the issue of kingdoms is a little more elaborate than we want to deal with in taxoboxes. Just Plantae is better than listing Chlorobionta, Viridiplantae, Protista, and all the other possibilities. On a related note, I've created a draft of WikiProject Prokaryotes and Protists with the standards I've been trying to follow so far. Please let me know what you think. Josh

I disagree - Algae are generally accepted as being distinct from the Kingdom Plantae. I see no reason to put them back into that kingdom. Having looked through the Lewis and McCourt paper [5] I see no reason why we should not be using that kindgom. It's cetainly more appealing than using the alternative - i have never liked Kingdom Protista for algae. Guettarda 19:22, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Chlorobionta or Viridiaeplantae - both names are used - are a recognised clade, as the paper you cite discusses, but only somewhat common as a kingdom. Newer studies find the Viridiaeplantae, Rhodophyta, and Glaucophyta form a larger clade, which is called Plantae after the kingdom as defined by Cavalier-Smith. The other algae are still understood to be separate; I'm not advocating a return to the non-phylogenetic kingdoms of Whittacker, if that's what you're objecting to. Josh

Do you have a reference on Cavalier-Smith? Is this Cavalier-Smith 1998 Biological Reviews 73:203-266? (Just wondering what I have to read to avoid parading my ignorance around). I misread Table 2 in Lewis and McCourt - I thought they were proposing a distinct Kingdom for the Green Algae. On first read I got the impression that you were advocating lumping all non-animals into "plants" - as does the article on plant (it includes a section called Algae and Fungi). Ok, so I withdraw my disagreement. Guettarda 21:07, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Cavalier-Smith 1998 has a good treatment, and I think the most recent, although the original idea comes from Cavalier-Smith 1981 Biosystems 14:461-481. Baldauf et al. 2003 Science 300:1703-1706 is a quick overview of current ideas about how the eukaryotes fit together, and mentions his Plantae as one of the supergroups. Josh

Well I have implemented the tax boxes, sans the Chlorobionta kingdom. I guess we should stay with plantae until there is more of a consensus in the taxonomy world. Also I take what Cavalier-Smith has to say with a grain of salt, his work The neomuran origin of archaebacteria, the negibacterial root of the universal tree and bacterial megaclassification has not fully been accepted by bacterial taxonomists. Onco p53 03:07, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Cavalier-Smith is controversial on bacteria, but is a very prominent figure on the eukaryote side of things. I've treated his work with some skepticism, but most of it has been supported by subsequent studies, for instance groups like the Plantae s.l. and Rhizaria. For his bacterial phylogeny, though, I haven't managed to find a paper that refutes his position, or even argues that bacteria are monophyletic from grounds besides the rRNA tree. Josh

Just speaking generally, it would be judicious simply to drop that part of the taxobox and refer the reader to the text. Like categories, taxoboxes don't allow for much nuance, and so should only list those levels of classification for which there is a general consensus. A Kingdom entry that says see text, or links to an article that discusses the current status, will get the reader's attention, and avoid taxobox churn from different people editing to prefer one authority over another. Stan 18:11, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If we wanted to do that, we wouldn't have any classification for any of the algae or protozoa, and not much for many other groups. I'm all for omitting things that don't exist (cp. centrohelid), but I think it's really ok to give a kingdom here without too much comment. Josh

It's not the end of the world to have a taxobox that is missing a line or two - after all, one of the reasons we discourage infraphyla and suchlike entries because they don't have enough of a consensus. The discussion above tells me that there is not much of a consensus for kingdoms, so putting in a navigation link that favors one system over another overstates the situation, and (dare we say it) espouses a POV. If you really really really want a link on that line, make it to an article that discusses the problem briefly, perhaps even one special-written for the purpose, so that general readers can see what the choices are (if I'm reading a 1980 book, the historical kingdom is probably of more interest for instance), and so that backlinks can be easily be found and fixed when a consensus emerges. Stan 19:45, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You miss my point. It's not like you'd only have a missing line or two, you wouldn't have anything, because there is no consensus on almost any aspect of protist taxonomy. Comparable situations exist for some other groups. For instance, there are several different ways of treating birds - some cladists will demote Aves below class, and there are several common ways of dividing them into orders. But instead of omitting everything above family, we list a "best guess" taxonomy, and make notes about it in the text. The same is happening here. Dropping the kingdom as too variable would create the misleading impression the rest of the classification isn't, and encourage the myth of consensus systems. Josh

If it's that bad, then maybe those articles can't have taxoboxes then? There are always outliers among systematists :-) ; I've been studying Takhtajan lately for instance, never seen so many one-family plant orders in my life, but that doesn't mean there isn't general agreement on the APG system, including agreeing to disagree on some points. Ditto for birds; it's going to take a lot more than some argumentative cladists to move Aves from being a class, which seems like a pretty good definition of a consensus. Doing "best guess" taxoboxes just seems like asking for trouble - when someone takes exception to one of your guesses, what then? What if you're on vacation and someone starts whacking at some of the protist taxoboxes, how are we supposed to tell the difference between an alternate but valid "best guess" vs a totally wacko system (or more likely, the one from 1911 EB, it also being authoritative, once)? At the very least, I would need the published works being used as authorities for taxonomy, to compare the edits against - I don't think you want me to do any guessing! Stan 22:50, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Protist taxonomy is where plant taxonomy was when the APG was just developing - nobody quite agreed on what to do, but a general sense of what should happen was developing. New systems started looking more and more alike as the underlying knowledge solidified. I think the important thing is that we present something that reflects the underlying knowledge, referenced in papers where possible, and then it will at least be close to any other contemporary systems.

Thus centrohelids are of mostly unknown relationships, so don't get a real position, while actinophryids are now considered to be derived heterokont algae, so get the most accessible classification that indicates this (plus the class has a reference for it). It isn't really standard, but I don't think anyone familiar with protists would complain, so long as it isn't taken as perfectly authoritative. I agree that could be better indicated - the page used to say "possible classification", but since I'm the only one who did that I didn't make it a template.

There's many cases where best guesses are all we can work with, and others where it is difficult to tell how standard a system is. There are several contemporary systems of bird orders, all in common use, and if someone said we were using the wrong one I don't think it would be easy to answer them. On the other hand, the current system of plant orders is definitely the most common, but if someone said they weren't certain enough to take as given I don't think we could handle that, either.

I think starting with the assumption that there's a single system in most cases is a mistake. This isn't something unique to the protists, just that's more common there. In the past, I'd argued against taxoboxes because they don't allow variation in systems, but they're very convenient and I like having them. The thing is, taxonomy is extremely dynamic, so anything we give should be considered tentative. I know a lot of people don't, and that creates problems, but I don't know what to do with them.

I'm not sure how the protist listings would be maintained in my absence. From experience, though, it's less likely that people would complain about what's given than that they would add what isn't, without much regard to whether it's generally accepted or not. It's hard to maintain gaps in taxoboxes, or keep them off pages - too many people assume that there is a single authoritative taxonomy for that to work. I think listing a best guess, and making it clear it's only a best guess, is probably the most realistic option. Josh

Since this discussion seems to be a little old, I'll start with the basics again. Personally I think we should group algae in the protist kingdom. My reasons are:

1)(most important point) As far as I'm concerned, as long as we do have the kingdom "protista", we are NOT going by actual clades. Meaning that if we DO start going by clades instead of the general taxonomy, we really should break apart the kingdom protista into all REAL clades. My biology book says protists are not closely related enough to each other (like all animals are, or all plants, etc) to justify putting them in a single kindom. So either we go by clades (and this goes for ALL taxonomic groups) or we go by the usual way they're grouped. We really have to be consistant. As of right now, wikipedia is a mess. If you go around looking at relevant articles they don't agree with each other. Some say algae are protists while others say they're plants, etc. (actually I just noticed Josh fixed a bunch of them)

2) Most places you go to say algae are in the kindom protista. I think we should follow the general thinking, although we should make it crystal clear to people reading the articles that the classifications may not represent actual clades, but that we are going by the general classification system.

and

3) This kind of goes with number two... I'm pretty sure most schools teach that algae are protists. If we start calling them plants, it may cause confusion among students doing their homework, etc.

4)When in doubt, I think we should do the simplest thing. The simplest thing in this situation I think would be to group algae as protists. We already have a ton of articles under the kindom protista, and changing them all to their real clades would be a pain.--TheAlphaWolf 17:21, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My last identification question

Could someone identify this animal? It's an even toed ungulate, but I can't figure out much beyond that. Once I have it identified, I'll be deleting and reuploading. →Raul654 20:09, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

I think it might be a musk deer. - UtherSRG 21:42, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)
Tricky to tell in my opinion. Raul, have you any more data? Presumably it was captive, but was it native too do you know? Was it a juvenile (kinda looks like one). If so, can you remember what the adult males looked like? General colour, tail length and colour, length and type of horns/antlers, style of gait? Pcb21| Pete 21:30, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)
AHA!!!! I was googling for information on the Animal Kingdom park, and I hit a goldmine. "Looking left while on the bridge, you will see a field with Elds Deer and Blackbuck. The Elds Deer Cervus eldi come from Burma and eastern India. The Elds Deer are an endangered species. The Blackbuck Antilope cervicapra are one of the fastest antelopes in the world. They can travel up to 50 miles per hour. The Blackbucks have the cork screw twisted horns." -- http://allearsnet.com/tp/ak/ak_mjt.htm
It's got to be one of those two. →Raul654 23:53, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)
It's definitely not a blackbuck. As for deer, it could be anything except for a handful of obvious creatures such as muntjac, moose, and caribou. I suppose it could also be a musk deer. There's not much there to work with. --Aranae 01:18, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge opinion

Should legumes and pulse (legume) be merged? --nixie 04:45, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My feeling is no. Pulses are agricultural crops in the legume family, while legumes constitute (one of?) the largest plant families. Worth keeping separate; it would be (almost) equivalent to merging cereal with Poaceae. Guettarda 15:33, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Guettarda. The pea family (Fabaceae) contains much more than pulses, just think of e.g. exotic hardwoods and gum arabic. BTW the orchid family (Orchidaceae) (+ 25,000 species) and the sunflower family (Asteraceae) (+ 20,000 species) are larger than the Fabaceae (+ 18,000). JoJan 17:40, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
25,000 Orchids? That explains a lot - the figure that I had in my head was 10,000. Always wondered why it was that the Flora of Trinidad and Tobago was 10% orchids, but that they were <5% of the world total for angiosperms. Mystery solved - my numbers were wrong. Guettarda 18:01, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Absolutely. do not merge. Pulse has a very specific definition that includes only legumes used for food or feed as the dry seed. -- WormRunner | Talk 02:12, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Agree with Wormrunner and others: absolutely not. The idea has no merit. Where is "pulses" considered a common name for all legumes? - Marshman 04:47, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
"Pulse" is the term for legumes as a seed crop, much like "cereal" is the term for large-seeded grasses. Not widely used in American English, but moderately common in other places (based on experience, which may be slanted, I think it's pretty much standard in Indian English, for example). Guettarda 14:12, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Yes, "pulse" woud be considered an agricultural/botanical term not used much at all in American English outside those fields - Marshman 17:08, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, don't merge legume and pulse (legume). But should legume be made a redirect to Fabaceae? - MPF 15:57, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cultivars?

May cultivars be considered to be the same as subspecies'? If not, should I create a Template:Taxobox cultivar entry? --Oldak Quill 20:31, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

IIRC, yes, a cultivar is similar in ranking to a subspecies. However, go ahead and create the taxobox template. - UtherSRG 20:46, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)
In botany, a cultivar is not a subspecies, but a horticultural variety, not occurring in the wild. Cultivar names are always quoted within single inverted commas and are not written in italics. Modern cultivars names are always in a modern language, but old cultivar names in Latin form are still valid. Cultivars may have several synonyms, but only the earliest name is correct. A cultivar can be written as follows : Ilex aquifolium 'Golden Milkboy'. If the species is uncertain, it may be omitted : Erigeron 'Charity'. Even hybrids can have cultivars : Populus x canadensis 'Gelrica'. In a long list of cultivars from the same genus, the genus name may be abbreviated to the capital letter, such as Sorbus japonica, S. 'Joseph Rock', S. intermedia,... Therefore a template for cultivars would be welcome. JoJan 10:37, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Bringing this one to the top as I'd not seen it before. JoJan is right about what cultivars are, but I don't think we should have taxoboxes for them, as they aren't taxa, they are individuals (clones). We don't have taxoboxes for breeds of dogs, cats, horses or cattle, which are the animal equivalent; nor do we have a taxobox for every named individual human (not even for the type specimen of Homo sapiens, Carolus Linnaeus). - MPF 16:10, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Actually, check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Cat breeds, Wikipedia:WikiProject Dog breeds, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Horse breeds. But you're right, too. they don't have taxoboxes, they have breedoboxes. - UtherSRG 19:03, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)
Personally, with hundreds of genera and thousands of species that don't have their own pages yet, I don't think we should be bothering with pages for individual named cultivars at all, other than in very exceptional circumstances. - MPF 16:10, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I agree to a point. Does every species need an article before someone starts work on Wikipedia:WikiProject Cultivars? If not, at what level of species completion is it acceptable to start that work, and what level are we at now? I'm more of the mind that we don't need it, but that if there is someone gung-ho to come up with a common cultibox, and all the other things that a cultivar wikiproject would need, then more power to 'em! - UtherSRG 19:03, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Biology portal

I encourage you all to help with maintaining the biology Wikiportal connected with this project! Ausir 23:03, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fodder and Forage

Is there a technical difference between fodder and forage? --nixie 04:59, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Without having looked at the articles, I'd understand it as fodder is what you cut and bring in to feed to animals, forage is what the animals go out to find for themselves. So hay is fodder, grass is forage. - MPF 00:12, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] forestryimages.org

Been getting no reply to this at Wikipedia talk:Image use policy - anyone here any ideas? or at least know where to ask to get an answer?

There's a huge collection of tree and forestry photos at http://www.forestryimages.org/. Most are taken by private individuals and copyrighted, with (usually) a non-commercial licence note attached; fair enough.

However, some are marked as taken by United States Forest Service personnel - these photos carry the same non-commercial license restrictions on the page (typical example: this one). Yet surely as US Government photos, these are in the public domain and free of copyright? Can I ignore the stated restrictions as being incorrect, and use these USFS photos with the tag {{PD-USGov-USDA-FS}}? - thanks, MPF 00:12, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • I asked the some question on the copyright tags page a few weeks ago. The university running that page cannot claim copyright for images taken by USFS employees--nixie 05:09, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Genera lists

Does anyone else think that these List of genera by name: B etc. are a bad idea? I tried to suggest to the creator of the lists that they would be unmanagable, probably never complete and really quite uninformative without a Kingdom type of breakdown.--nixie 05:09, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New descendent WikiProject

I've created a new WikiProject, WikiProject Viruses that has been listed as a descendant of the tree of life. Yes, I know, viruses aren't living creatures, but I feel that articles on viruses could definitely benefit from what other articles (such as ones on mammals, birds, etc.) have. It is so similar to those projects that I decided to add it here. Since it was just created a couple minutes ago, it really needs some motivated people to help begin this task. Please feel free to list yourself as a participant, or offer your help to the WikiProject! Thank you. -Frazzydee|✍ 22:15, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Raking Ranking

As I am a cladist at heart I'm a bit irked by the use of ranks above Family. Most of the time they're unnecessary clutter and just bring a number of terms that don't mean all that much. Perhaps I'm scaring up an issue that has been settled, but even so I'd like to give my oppinion.

Ranks, when they were first introduced, just stated similarities in form or uniting morphologies not evolutionary relationships. Of course with the acceptance of evolution the ranks grouped creatures with a similar evolutionary background. They often reflected the perceived importance of particular groups ecologically or culturally and not really their morphological diversity.

For example, dinosaurs are much more morphologically diverse than are birds (being the affirmation found in some books that bird orders could be easily collapsed into families a coroboration). In spite of that birds are a class because it has historically been so, and not for any other reason. It is certain that birds are a group with ecological importance nowadays and occupy most flying niches, but phylogeny and taxonomy should first reflect ascendent/descendent relations and not artificial classifications based on human "prejudices" brought about by the Holocene natural world.

So I think that as a good measure, and respecting the NPOV the Taxoboxes should present cladistic classification as presented in the [Dinosauricon Classification Pages] along with the Linnaean classification. Perhaps with Linnaean ranks in parentheses after the name of the clade. Any oppinions? - Dracontes 11:38, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What, you don't put "Class" or "Order" or whatever in front of a rank, but just float a word out there, adding new ones inbetween as opinion dictates and that is supposed to be an advancement in process? - Marshman 17:15, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
When Linnaean ranks do much the same, as in some papers on Liaoning dinosaur taxa in which the most abscondent example is Sinosauropterygiformes: Sinosauropterygidae: Sinosauropteryx prima when the animal by all accounts is a feathered compsognathid, that's not much of a reason. Not talking about that inordinate urge taxonomists had of erecting families for just one species. So no, not every node of the tree has to have a designation (only the most significative ones) though they do have to have definitions. Dracontes 13:01, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think presenting separate Linnaean and cladistic classifications is a bad idea. It creates the misleading impression that there are two types of taxonomy. Taxonomy is dynamic, there are many systems out there, and most of the new ones follow both Linnaean and cladistic principles to some extent. For instance, APGII uses orders and families but is purely clade-based; would we list the same thing twice?Josh

When thinking about it... Yes there are two types of classification: one that who knows how it works (Linnaean) as definitions are at best fuzzy. And a phylogenetic approach that leaves definitions of groupings much clearer, IMO (Y'know what? One doesn't even need names for groups now if definitions are available.)
No, Dracontes. I'll repeat what I said, most recent Linnaean taxonomy is based on phylogenetic principles. To pretend there are two separate methods leading to two separate systems completely ignores the reality for most groups.

Speaking about opposing Linnaean and cladistic systems applies mainly to the vertebrates. Here the traditional Linnaean system is still more common, and quite frankly more useful.Josh

I'd like it for you to put up evidence on how is it more useful (I'm not in any way suggesting its removal from Wikipedia). Do ellucidate as I've been hypeing on this newfangled cladistics for some years and may have been mislead. Dracontes 13:01, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The sequence of clades is a valid description of the phylogeny, but using it to organize information has proven difficult. The traditional classes make it easy to discuss many properties of the organisms in question, correspond well with most literature, and represent the phylogeny - using paraphyletic groups, but I've never seen that confuse anyone about true relationships. It might change, but at the moment they're more useful. Josh

The cladistic system is an important alternative, but there are many groups where there are several alternative classifications, and the taxobox simply isn't the place to list them. Listing the clades in the article body should be enough, in my opinion. Josh

Fair enough. And I think now that taxoboxes are as good as they get. I'll just ignore the ranks (when reading, I'll put them there while writing up an article). So being taxonomy dynamic (an I apologize if I may have given an otherwise impression) why not a clade page with a "consensus" tree and smaller versions for alternative views? But I do think a standard classification method should be used, it's supposed that communication of knowledge should be simple and not complicated. So I think it's hardly ever the point to discuss ranks when one should discuss nodes. Dracontes 13:01, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree. Also, I find the idea that any classification system is anything other than artificial is missing a point somewhere. Even at the level of species there is plenty that is artificial about our designations. And I do not think anyone really expects that say an "order" as applied by ichthyologists will correspond exactly in some natural way to an order as used by entomologists. Cladistics is a tool, not some kind of natural system of order in the biosphere; phylogeny does reflect descendent relationships (by definition, I think); and taxonomy is an "artificial classification based on human prejudices" hopefully subject always to improvement using tools like cladistics and genetics, improvement hopefully along phylogenetic lines. And there is not likely ever to be parity in understanding or completeness between the extant flora and fauna and that of times past, so however you arrive at your classification, it will be strongly biased to the Holocene - Marshman 21:06, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yes indeed. Though the more artificial and human prejudice bias is left out the better.
Though by that same token why use orders or other ranks when they are diferently interpreted among scientists of different areas? I have to note that when one knows what the name of a clade means ranks seem nothing short of irrelevant as Elpistostegalia is more evocative than suborder. Dracontes 13:01, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Ranks don't say anything about the composition of a group, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful. For instance, they tell you the relative sizes of taxa. When I tell you that Carassius is in family Cyprinidae and order Cypriniformes, it's clear how the groups relate. Not so when I tell you that Actinophrys is a heterokont, actinodine, and axodine. The tree is what matters, but the ranks can make its structure more obvious, and have proven to be a good way of organizing information.
Now when there is no consensus on the rank of a group at all, it doesn't help to give one, and we shouldn't. By the same token, when there is no idea how a group should be classified, we shouldn't give an authoritative list of subgroups. That doesn't change that these things are frequently useful. Josh

"For example, dinosaurs are much more morphologically diverse than are birds (being the affirmation found in some books that bird orders could be easily collapsed into families a coroboration)" - this is a bit misleading. While birds evolved from one family of dinosaurs, they have had 60 million years more to diversify and evolve from one family into numerous orders. And of course dinosaur classification itself over their far longer period has to reflect that taxa do not stay the same rank over time, with species becoming genera, families, orders, and so on. - MPF 22:47, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Erm... Population begets population and that's about it. As I see it there is no validity to that last phrase you wrote. Populations are what evolves, either clado or orthogenetically, and one can't forcibly think that a taxon rank changes into another by natural processes, only by human scrutiny does that happen.
Errr . . . Wikipedia is human scrutiny :-) . . . MPF 21:01, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Ranks don't change by natural processes because they don't exist in nature. However, species routinely turn into groups of species, into larger groups of species.
Neornithes did diversify before the K-Pg. Earlier this year Vegavis iaai was discribed in Nature (20 January 2005) as a 67-million-year-old stem duck just as Presbyornis is. So galliformes and tinamiformes should already exist by that time.
In fact non-avian dinos had much more time to evolve than Neornitheans: 165 against 120 million years. Not mentioning that birds are quite conservative in body plan... Dracontes 13:01, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Scientific name page titles

Bringing this one up again (from Common names above) - I'd like to commence on at least a trial start with some plant families, moving pages from vernacular name titles to scientific name titles. It seemed a popular idea when discussed above, with only the size of the task dissuading action. If no-one objects strongly, I'll start with some of the conifers. - MPF 18:20, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes! Good plan. -- WormRunner | Talk 00:17, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree - Marshman 17:53, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Probably for plants it will work out better than for animals since there are so many common names for plants, and so few of the scientific names about species level will have conflicts. Animals have so many common names that are the same as the scientific names (above species level), that this would mean some significant juggling around of some articles, and making choices that are sometims less than obvious.... and then we'd still want to have articles about commonly named groups of animals that would not have a single scientific name grouping. I shudder to think of all the bird articles that would get moved...... - UtherSRG 01:29, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

Started with the Araucariaceae. I need admin help though to move Wollemi Pine to Wollemia, please. Thanks - MPF 16:30, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Got it. - UtherSRG 16:44, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)
Super, thanks! - MPF 17:34, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I even merged the histories. And for anyone wondering, posting move requests of this nature instead of WP:RM is fine by me... these requests wouldn't need to be voted on since they are part of a shift in idealogy of a WikiProject. - UtherSRG 18:12, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)
Excellent. On posting the move request here, that's what I'd guessed :-) Araucariaceae completed now; it's a slow task, but much of that is because of doing lots of other editing while I'm at it (like when I discovered there wasn't any info on what Wollemia looked like!). All in all, I think it's worthwhile though. - MPF 19:59, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
With the posting of move requests like that, it would be almost no additional burden to come up with some boilerplate statement to be put on the talk page of the affected article pointing out that such a request has been made. Gene Nygaard 02:54, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi Uther - another move request please: Chinese Arborvitae to Platycladus - thanks, MPF 17:57, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Done! - UtherSRG 18:25, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! - MPF 18:43, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Kind of sad to think that something like Category:Cupressaceae will be rendered useless for non-experts - "Monterey Cypress" I can recognize in the category listing, "Cupressus macrocarpa" not. But in the apparent absence of readers, I guess it doesn't matter much either way. Stan 21:35, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Often wondered if anyone ever reads the stuff we put in here!

Nope.
In a case like this, could an argument be made for including categories on redirects? The "Monterey Cypress" would still show up in the Category. Guettarda 22:44, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Uther - another two please: Dawn Redwood to Metasequoia, and Coast Redwood to Sequoia - thanks, MPF 21:38, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Done! Ack! I finished the first and you've already added the second. Ok... Done! *grins* - UtherSRG 21:54, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks! There'll prolly be more . . . :-) MPF 22:52, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The second move doesn't make much sense. Sequoia should be about the genus, and the Coast Redwood is only one of the species, according to Sequoia (disambiguation). Also, sorry for coming in so late, but are we really sure Sequoia semprovirens is a better name for the article than Coast Redwood? It's true we're too eager to use common names, many of which are less common than the scientific, but Stan's right. We can't assume no readers, and we want to keep things like pine and cypress. Josh

S. semprovirens is monotypic in the genus. There are two other trees called sequoias, but none of the three are in the same genus. One is in Metasequoia, the other in Sequoiadendron. - UtherSRG 22:46, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
Yes, Sequoia is about the genus; being a monotypic genus, there isn't any need to have a separate Sequoia sempervirens page. I'll be adding a note at the top of Sequoia to point at the disambig page for the other two. I take your (Josh's) & Stan's point, but I think internal consistency within a family/category is probably even more important (Cupressaceae was a real mess of a mix of scientific and vernacular before!), and keeping vernacular names for all the family wasn't really a valid option in this family. As for cypress, that's already a disambig page; Pinaceae I haven't started to tackle yet. - MPF 22:52, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Why would considerations of "internal consistency" override intelligibility to the whole reader population? The English language itself is not internally consistent, but we don't all switch to speaking Esperanto because of that. If nothing else, the dual system is a good indicator of commonly-known taxa, vs ones only recognized by specialists. Neither all-Latin nor all-English are ever going to be possible - you are simply never ever going to get agreement to rename lion to panthera leo, so you're guaranteed to have some English names no matter what. Let's think of a rule that will take that into account - a while back I mentioned my personal rule, which was "Latin if there is any doubt as to a single English name". Stan 04:22, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Aquaria contain both neon tetras and Plecostomus, and gardeners will plant sunflowers alongside Xeranthemum. Fossil collections may contain oysters as well as Phacodinida, and under the microscope I find roundworms more often than Volvocales. A mix of names isn't more confusing than one system or the other, if it's what people are used to. And the taxonomic hierarchy isn't the only way to group species - range, habitat, time period, and use are all important.

Why not follow the wikipedia standard: use the most common name? This shouldn't mean vernacular at all costs, and there are many pages that should be moved to the scientific name (including Sequoia, sorry for my mistake). But we don't have to be rigid, sometimes the vernacular can be better. And as I've mentioned before, there are cases where it is less ambiguous (dicot vs Magnoliopsida) and more stable (conifer vs Pinophyta). Josh

I prefer the use of the scientific name, especially for pages at the family and genus level, after considering the last discussion on common vs. scientific names if there is a common name with clear usage for a species I tend to use it.--nixie 08:45, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A lot of people here seem to be losing sight of the basic philosophy of Wikipedia:Naming conventions, Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.
See my talk page for the nonsense about California redwood by MPF.
I agree with Gene. It is just confusing to have the tree most people know as the Redwood, or Costal Redwood, or California Redwood called Sequoia on Wikipedia. To most people, sequoia refers to the Giant Sequoia, another native tree of california. Bonus Onus 02:09, May 19, 2005 (UTC)
Somebody mentioned categories already, but let me go into that in more detail:
Has anybody even thought about what to do when a current article covers dozens of species?
How about when one species has several different articles?
Now let's factor in the difficulty of making the links. Sure, with redirects, we will still be able to make links to the common names.
  • However, there are a significant number of Wikipedia editors who like to avoid redirects at all costs. When they get their fingers on an article, it will become so cluttered up on the edit page that it will be much more difficult for future editors when they need to deal with those edit pages.
If you are not going to do a blanket policy for all of them, including human to Homo sapiens sapiens and barley to Hordeum vulgare and sheep to Ovis aries, then common courtesy requires that you give notice of any intended change on any page to be affected.
Some participants in this discussion have blathered naively about some vague, subjective dividing line between what is changed and what isn't changed. That simply isn't going to work. Any but the most obvious conformity with the general policy discussed above should be discussed on the talk pages of the articles in question, to give the people who have worked hard on that article some say in what happens to it. Gene Nygaard 12:37, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Answers to some of the above:

  1. Most plant species simply don't have common names, or if they do, they're invented names without any real currency (like e.g. Johann's Pinyon). To cite a minuscule sample of crop plants is not very relevant, and can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis if necessary. To bring in livestock and pets is also wholly outside the boundary of this discussion about plants.
  2. A huge number of plants have several common names; to bring in Sequoia sempervirens again, the most widely used is Coast Redwood, not california redwood (an ambiguous name also used for Sequoiadendron giganteum) where it has currently been moved to. Equally, many common names refer to completely different plants in different places; look at e.g. Sycamore; to use them results either in confusion or imposition of a regional POV. Scientific names don't have this problem.
  3. "Has anybody even thought about what to do when a current article covers dozens of species?" - Of course. Take a look at any page about a genus or a family. Or if a common name covers several unrelated taxa, then a disambig page.
  4. "How about when one species has several different articles?" - Not relevant, this doesn't happen, or if it does by accident (e.g. by different editors creating pages under different common names), they are merged.
  5. "... to give the people who have worked hard on that article some say in what happens to it ..." - That is to a large extent the same people who have "blathered naively" here. I trust future contributions to this debate will avoid such intemperate language. Thank you.

MPF 14:15, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Some replies, by the numbers:
1. In those cases it is a moot point. The only time you have a decision to make is when they do have a common name.
  • To bring in livestock and pets is by no stretch of the imagination outside the boundary of this discussion, the "tree" in the title of this page includes them too. The same is proposed for them in the section above, from which this notion of a test run starting with a few plants was a spinoff.
2. Several common names is not much of a problem; that's what redirects are for. But people looking in the categories such as Category:Flowers or Category:Crops or whatever will more likely find them under one of the common names, than they would under one of the often several scientific names.
  • Disambiguation pages, or just a disambiguation line in other articles, takes care of the other problem. This is something still necessary, whether the disambiguation points to a scientific name or to a common name.
3. There are cases where one species, or group of related species, has several articles. Some are by design (Squash and pumpkin come to mind). Others are the type you describe. I don't deal with plant articles very often, but before I ever became involved in this discussion, I had run across one of them, and added merge template tags to them. They still haven't been changed, however.
4. Two points here:
  • there are a great many people who have contributed to the individual articles who never come here to this project page.
  • Those who have "blathered naively" here when talking in glittering generalities would probably also like it called to their attention in regards to individual articles, especially since no clear dividing line has been drawn here. Given a specific focal point, those who have blathered naively when talking in general terms so far might well come out of the experience with a better view of the issues involved. Gene Nygaard 02:54, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

One thing I wonder about is why so few people are paying attention to this. I count less than ten people talking about the issue, but the proposed rule change would affect articles like human which are probably watched by hundreds of editors, and who would be unimpressed by a "consensus" consisting of just five editors here. One could probably rename pine species all day without anybody noticing, but the proposal is not just for pines. What do we need to do to raise awareness? The pump is not so useful, it's so overloaded that I'm not sure that the relevant editors will notice. We could put notes on a random selection of pages Talk:human, Talk:lion, Talk:rose, etc - my guess is lots of resistance from animal people, not so much from plant people. In any case, the moving was billed as an experiment, so I guess that means Gene Nygaard's outburst is a data point. :-) Stan 14:33, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't think anyone (certainly not me) has seriously suggested doing this for animals yet. I'd agree with your comment that it would be less popular for mammals & birds in particular (which generally have more fixed common names than plants) MPF 16:36, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, just to confirm, I would object in the strongest possible terms if this was suggested for mammals (for example) but at it stands I for one am happy to trust people who know about pines to do the right thing with pine articles. Pcb21| Pete 17:10, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Frog

This article contains all sorts of stuff either applicable to Ranidae (the true frogs) or other frogs (those anurans cuter than toads), which is incorrect of course. Now, aside from the factual inaccuracies still present in the article, how are para/polyphyletic groups accepted by laymen best handled on wikipedia? Keep toad and frog separated as it is now and refer to genera and families that are "accepted as frogs" (I only know something about European frogs, and they are slightly messy already). Or take the "bah, semantics" stance, be userunfriendly and only use Anura, further divided into Archaeobatrachia etc (with frog and toad redirecting). Phlebas 17:53, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And? Any opinions? Phlebas 13:09, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Articles should be named in a reasonable manner to cover the information presented. In this case, I think there should be an article called frog which covers all frogs, an article called toad which covers all toads, and various articles describing Anura as a whole and Ranidae, etc. as individual groupings. When two articles overlap entirely in this manner, then the article should be placed at the more common naming, with the less common redirecting to it. - UtherSRG 13:40, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Plants - latin vs english naming convention

Sorry to butt in, I'm a newbie with an interest in plants. I'm reposting a question I posed on the Talk Page for User:Circeus, a member of WikiProject Plants, who suggested I post it here.

Re-post of message: Coincidentally, the other day I was searching for plants, in preparation of making my 'To do' list, and noticed several moves (e.g. Ajuga to Bugle), which indicate a preference here at Wikipedia to use english rather than latin names. I find that rather confusing (perplexing), since when we talk about the larger picture (e.g. genus etc) we use latin. Since I plan to contribute articles/pics in the area of plants, I'd like to get clarification on the latin vs. english nomenclature for page titles. My user page has a list of articles/pics that I plan to contribute. I hope that fits in with what the rest of the team is doing. If I should have posted this on the team Discussion page, please let me know.

Since I wrote the above note, I've read the discussion here, as well as the guidelines related to 'always use common names'. I had planned to use latin names for articles, and would like to know if a final consensus on this topic was reached here at ToL. Mia Goff 18:41, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Well, there's no always-right answer, but the general rule of thumb is a preference for the (English) common name, but to use the scientific name when the use of the common name would cause more confusion than it would prevent. Also, there are times when more than one article would be appropriate, such as when the common name crosses scientific boundaries, then there should probably be an article for the common name grouping and for the scientific name group. You mileage may vary. *grins* If you're really stymied, ask here or on WP:PLANTS, but be bold and write those articles, we can always move and tweak them afterwards. - UtherSRG 20:35, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
I'd use a latin name only if the species name are too wide-ranging to meet an acceptable plural for the genus. I usually write my article first at the scientific name, then move it to its vernacular, to simplify things (I don't have to create the redirect from scratch). I've already explained to you my basic understanding at yoour talk page. Note that obviously, if common and latin name are identical (bergenia, comes to mind)... Circeus 22:43, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
Note that parts of what I've written violates the above discussion #Scientific name page titles, a policy I actually do not agree with (especially considering there are, to a certain extent, normalized list of vernacular species name, at least in French)
Ok thanks for the clarification. I'll get writing/picture taking as soon as the weather turns bad here. Right now, my priority is work in the garden. Also, am trying to familiarize myself with the MoS. Mia Goff 19:54, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Contradiction in text

"In cases where a group only contains a single subgroup, the two need not be kept separate. If
there is no common name, the article should go under the scientific name with the lowest rank, 
down to the level of genus. For instance, the division Ginkgophyta, class Ginkgoopsida, order 
Ginkgoales and family Ginkgoaceae only contain the single species Ginkgo biloba, so there is a 
single article for them at Ginkgo with the other pages redirecting to it. However, it may be 
noted that Ginkgophyta does have other extinct members, and so these groups may be separated 
out as pages on them are added.
(...)
A useful heuristic is to create articles in a "downwards" order, that is, family articles
first, then genus, then species. If you find that information is getting thin, or the
family/genus is really small, just leave the species info inline in the family or genus
article, don't try to force it down any further. An exception to this is monotypic families or
genera; create a species article then redirect family and genus names to it."

This seems to be a contradiction in the text. The first alinea says that one should create only the genus article when a genus is monotypic, while the third alinea says that one should create the species article, with the genus (and/or family) as redirects. Ucucha See Mammal Taxonomy 06:09, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

So fix it. - UtherSRG 22:18, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
Gingko is perhaps not the best example, because it's just a coincidence that the common name is the same as the genus name, and the article is placed according to the "common name" rule. So no contradiction. But do we have another species that is monotypic at multiple levels, and has a common name different from systematic name? Stan 23:28, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
We do indeed: Vampire Squid and Aye-aye. Obviously, we place those article at the common name, which is most often the preferred placement of the article. What we need is an article whose scientific name is more common than is "common" name, is a monotypic species and is placed at the genus level, and the genus is monotypic in a listed family or sub-family taxon. - UtherSRG 00:00, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Lots of things are available, but the problem is we don't have an entirely consistent policy. Normally we use the name of lowest rank, I think. For monotypic genera, though, we often use the generic name since its part of the binomial. Compare the animals Trichoplax, Symbion, and Limnognathia, each with a single species and in its own phylum. Some pages go the other way - a random scan finds Kenyanthropus platyops.

Some other exceptions exist, too. For instance, conifers are currently listed as Pinophyta instead of Pinopsida. In this case, the former name is what tends to be used, although I think there is enough variability that conifer would be the best bet. Before we change the passage, maybe we should decide what the standard is. Josh

But what's the best? I think we should prefer the genus name. Ucucha See Mammal Taxonomy 05:26, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm having the exact same issue over at Sheathbill with Sabine's Sunbird. I'd appreciate a decision. Circeus 10:52, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
Issue is a strong word. I guess it's that in ornithology I'm used to thinking of birds in terms of species or family, not genus (except for a few awkward genera like Empidonax flycatchers or gadfly petrels). The construction that sheathbills were a genus seemed not wrong but irrelevant and inellegant. A shorebird biologist would tell you that the sheathbills were Antarctica's only endemic family of birds. The point is moot, however, as UtherSRG's edit is an improvement I can live with. Sabine's Sunbird 15:17, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Takes a bow* Thanks! - UtherSRG 15:29, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
The advantage of using the genus as the base unit for monotypic taxa is that it has the shortest, most familiar and most readily remembered title. Sciadopitys is easier to find for someone doing a search, than either Sciadopityaceae or Sciadopitys verticillata. - MPF 15:37, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
Maybe, but less important for mammals and birds where common names are more, well, common, and therefore likley to be used. Sabine's Sunbird 03:04, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

We should have general guidelines for other things. I'd propose

  1. Use the vernacular when it is well-known and unambiguous.
  2. Otherwise use the generic name, if applicable.
  3. Otherwise use the name most often used to refer to the group when it is being discussed without rank, as in cladistics, if there is a clear preference. For instance, phylum names are usually preferable to class names.
  4. Finally, names associated with the lowest rank are preferred - family over order, order over class, etc. Intermediate ranks such as suborder should be avoided if possible.

Does this sound reasonable to everyone? Would anyone object to stating it explicitly in the naming guidelines? Josh

[edit] Collective Terms for Groups of Animals

Some of us may be groping for the exact term for a group of animals (ever heard of a sounder of wild boars ?). I made a Word document of those terms, sampled from the OED. It's 16 pages long (about 585 Kb). If anyone is interested, just send me an email to JoJan11@msn.com. I'll send you then this text as an appendix (with the extension .doc) to your email address. JoJan 13:31, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

You should check with the lists at Collective noun Circeus 13:53, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Taxobox errors

I am currently running a bot to make redirects from Latin names for taxa to the articles about those taxa, for example Cyclarhis gujanensis to Rufous-browed Peppershrike. I plan to do this for binomials, trinomials, and genera (when the genus is monotypic), using data from article taxboxes.

As a side-effect of this project, I've made a report on apparent errors in taxoboxes where the binomial appears to be missing, or fails to match the genus and species. See User:Gdr/Nomialbot/Report 2005-05-19. Gdr 22:37, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

Gosh, I forgot to point out this would have to take in account the normal boxes' species entry has the genus abbreviated. Also, the bot seems to threat higher groups (that do not even have a {{taxobox species entry}}) as if they were species... So 90% of these are cases were the bot should not have applied itself or couldn't cope correctly with the regular taxobox syntax. Circeus 23:19, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

I'm don't understand what you are getting at. Can you give some examples of the problems you are seeing? Gdr 23:37, 2005 May 19 (UTC)

[edit] Automated taxobox update possibilities

Here are some things that could be done automatically or with automated assistance:

  1. Where {{Taxobox section binomial}} has three words, change it to {{Taxobox section trinomial}}. (Example: Formosan Clouded Leopard)
  2. Where a taxobox has {{Taxobox genus entry}} and {{Taxobox species entry}} but no {{Taxobox section binomial}} (or any of the variants), add the latter. (Example: American eel)
  3. Where Wikipedia has articles on species in a genus, but no article on the genus, synthesize a stub article on the genus. (Example: we have Phoenicurus moussieri, Phoenicurus phoenicurus, and Phoenicurus ochruros but no Phoenicurus)

Are any of these good things to do? Gdr 09:27, 2005 May 20 (UTC)

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