Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian biota

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[edit] Change of scope

This is a good idea for a WikiProject, but I suggest we expand it to include all Australian biota. This would also require a rename to "WikiProject Australian biota". This way, when we get new people who are interested in plants (which are not Banksias) or any other type of life (we need a fungi expert), they have somewhere to come which is related to Australia. Thanks. --liquidGhoul 07:50, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I was actually wondering if that should have been the scope of the project from the start. Anyway, I think it's a good idea.So that's what we'll do. Atlantis Hawk 06:41, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New section

I've started a new section in the project. What do you think? Atlantis Hawk 07:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind the idea, but I would rather do it the way Wikipedia:WikiProject Banksia do it, where they stick with it until it is featured. Then go on to the next article. Of course, they have it easier, as there are less people with a narrow field of interest. --liquidGhoul 10:43, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree that once an article is identified as near ready for a run at FA Wikipedia:WikiProject Banksia concentrates one that one, but in between we just work on everything as info presents itself. For this project maybe we identify 3 or 4 different types of articles that have reached GA work collectively on them all, when one is very close it gets presented to the project for everybody to concentrate on. You dont need to know specifics about the subject but everybody can copy edit check images, ensure all those little style niggles that get picked at FAC have been fixed. Gnangarra 11:03, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Yep, I like it. Because we have such a broad scope here, we would probably need a couple for fauna, a couple for flora etc. Even though I know nothing of flora, I would be happy to copyedit anything that is needed. This could be a good place to get this kind of thing started, with a community which help each other as much as possible. --liquidGhoul 13:52, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Well I think we should continue to work on the Corroboree frog article, but also work extensively on any 'GA'-classed article until it is featured. Atlantis Hawk 10:04, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Photography

I have been wanting a WikiProject like this to help with the collaboration of photography. There are many common species around Australia which don't have a photo yet. For some reason, all our froggers are in the Sydney area (although there is a new guy from South Australia). For this reason, we need people from the outback, out west, up north etc. to take photos of their local frogs for us. I am sure there are flora people who need common species from my region as well, but I don't know what is needed, and don't know how/where to find it.

I think the best system, would be for people to announce whenever they are going on a field trip somewhere (which could include the bush, local park or zoo). If the location rings a bell for someone, they can run in and say something like: "Take a photo of Banksia integrifolia" or "take a photo of any frog you see, and remember to look under logs and follow calls!" (I would probably say something like that :P). Also, maybe create a database of where we are missing many photos. So, if we are missing a large number of Banksia species from around Broome, Hobart, Adelaide etc. we write that somewhere obvious, and hopefully people can notice it, and go out a snappin'. Thoughts? Thanks. --liquidGhoul 14:13, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

For plants I just photograph everything(joy of digital) thats flowering when wandering in the bush, same goes for animals and birds that are around. One day some poor person(me) is going to have to work what genus they all are and post. Gnangarra 14:38, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I do to a degree. Will be more willing to now that I have a 2Gb card instead of 128mb. But, I never upload the plants to wiki, as I never expect them to get identified. I have quite a few plants which need identification. Also (sorry to bring it back to frogs), frogs are in people's backyards, and they don't think of photographing them. I have asked a few people if they have photos, as they live in a different area, and many have said they never think about it. Have you gotten any unidentified frog photos in your travels? --liquidGhoul 14:44, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Besides the one with White-faced Heron I've got a couple of snaps but I must admit I havent taken considered/composed photos. Gnangarra 14:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I tried to upload photos of the Eastern three-lined skink to the 'stub' page that asked for contributions, but as a new user, was not allowed - they are now on Wikipedia Commons if anyone who can cares to upload them to the Eastern three-lined skink page. I may be able to upload/forward any of the plant photos from Friends of Herring Island website (www.vicnet.net.au/~herring) for the appropriate pages. Onesland (talk) 02:49, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Other Articles to work on

I read each article changes the reptile article to working towards featured list. Amphibians is probably the closest to FA, Birds need to decide whether its going to be a list or an article. The big problem one is Fish in Australia it needs to decide whether its Fish in Australia or Fishing in Australia, see the FIA talk page for more thoughts. Gnangarra 14:29, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I placed those on there as the highest importance articles we have (below fauna and flora of Australia). Fish in Australia has probably been misdirected somewhere, and needs a lot of work. I would like to turn reptiles into an article, but I don't have the resources, or probably the stamina and interest in the subject to follow it through without the support of others. I have a high interest in native reptiles, but I find it much easier if someone is helping me all the way. I don't think I could have worked on frog without the help of the guys/gals who helped out.
Do you want to replace Corroboree Frog with Amphibians of Australia. I do want to eventually get the Corroboree frog article featured (so maybe put it on the "other articles to work on" list), but it is lacking many photos, and I want people to see the beauty of them when the article is featured. I want them to fall in love with them, so we have more people fighting for frog conservation (sounds POV, I know, but knowledge is the key in this fight). Amphibians of Australia has many beautiful frogs, and will help people to realise the diversity in Australia. Thanks. --liquidGhoul 14:40, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Have a look at List of dragonfly species recorded in Britain its a featured list, all those that are listed should be equal to this in style and content thats why I suggested FL instead of FA. Gnangarra

[edit] Proposed category conventions

I've done a lot of work on the flora categories this weekend. Something I've been wrestling with over a long period of time is the problem of what to include in the Category:Flora of Australia category tree. Australia has lots of flowering plants, but no-one in their right mind would seriously suggest we tag Flowering plant into Category:Flora of Australia.

I think I have a solution to this. I have posted a proposed convention for categorisation at Wikipedia:WikiProject Australian biota/Categories. Feedback would be appreciated. It is currently written only in terms of flora; if accepted, should it also be applied to fauna?

Hesperian 12:42, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Have you seen the new guideline I added to WP:TOL today? It is still experimental (and will need some ammendments), but I think it would apply well here. Books on Australian plants (that I have seen) either collate all Australia's flora into the one book, or split them up according to taxonomy, not geography. Therefore, I would go with the taxonomy section. Also, in relation to the fauna categories, they are already split up according to taxonomy. E.g Category:Frogs of Australia (I will change this to amphibians soon), Category:Birds of Australia etc. Thanks. --liquidGhoul 13:09, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
The category system is a lattice not a tree, so we can use both. I've rolled out Category:Proteales of Australia and Category:Myrtales of Australia, and will continue along this road. But there really is no reason why we can't also have categories like Category:Flora of Western Australia. In the long run, I think there would even be merit in categorising by IBRA region. Hesperian 01:37, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I would much rather ecosystems than state lines. There are lots of them though. --liquidGhoul 01:48, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
My theory is you don't fight what you can't win. People will categorise by state, because people will want to know what flora are in their state. There's no point fighting it. A sensible compromise on distribution by state would be to adopt the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions [1] which breaks Australia up as follows:
Australasia
Australia
Norfolk Island
Lord Howe Island
Norfolk Island
New South Wales
Australian Capital Territory
New South Wales
Northern Territory
Queensland
Coral Sea Island Territory
Queensland
South Australia
Tasmania
Victoria
Western Australia
Ashmore-Cartier Islands
Western Australia
New Zealand
This would give us a state-based categorisation system, but with an official stamp of approval from botanists. We'd just have to convince the ACT people to permit Category:Flora of the Australian Capital Territory to be set as a subcategory of Category:Flora of New South Wales. They might not like that much. ;-) Hesperian 02:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
If we create the categories in such a way that there is no need to create many overlapping categories, then that would be best. Means we don't have huge umbers of categories for one article. I have given up trying to convince other countries (except New Guinea) to go the non-political route, but I just don't see it working in Australia (especially for fauna). I am less knowledgable in flora, and if it is common to do things by state, then that is the way it should be done. However, if we can find the most common method of splitting up Australia for botanists, it doesn't matter if most people don't understand the regions. We can create maps (I have already started here) so they know what the regions mean. It is better to educate people than to dumb down our categorisation system to suit them. I would find it much more useful to look up "Flora of Eastern Australia" than "Flora of New South Wales", as there are so many plants out west which just aren't around here. --liquidGhoul 02:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Even at a continental scale I think it would be better to follow the WGSRPD. Their continental scale subdivision is:
  1. Europe
  2. Africa
  3. Asia-Temperate
  4. Asia-Tropical
  5. Australasia
  6. Pacific
  7. Northern America
  8. Southern America
  9. Antarctic
If we could convince people to follow this categorisation, which is the categorisation endorsed by botanists, I think that would be a good thing. Hesperian 02:44, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
That'd be fine, do you want to bring it up somewhere like WP:PLANTS? I just created it according to what was there. What do they do about the Atlantic? Thanks.
I think we would need to bring this up to a certain level of maturity before taking it to a wider audience. I'll create an article on the standard, and bring Category:Flora of Australia into line with it. Then we can talk about how to convince others to jump on board.
From the standard:
"Except for the Pacific, islands have been included with their nearest continental land mass. The rather few Atlantic islands have been attached to the Americas to the west or Europe or Africa to the east, and Bermuda has been placed for convenience into the Caribbean. It was a moot point whether the Azores should go into Europe or with the other Macaronesian islands into Africa, the decision narrowly favouring the latter on phytogeographical grounds.
As well as answering your question, I think this quote gives a pretty good idea just how difficult and subjective it is to define a categorisation for plant distributions. All the more reason to let the botanists figure it out, and adopt their recommendations.
Hesperian 03:05, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Do you want to work on all parent articles up to "Flora of Australia" as well (Oceania, continent etc.), so we have more barganing chips. I will try and clean up the Australian fauna, and parent articles (including maps). It shouldn't take much, as I have been working on it for a while. --liquidGhoul 03:16, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I think so. Step one: Bring Australia into line. Step two: Help our Kiwi friends to bring their categories into line. Step three: Replace Category:Flora of Oceania by Category:Flora of Australasia, in accordance with the standard. Step four: Tell the rest of the world what great things we've been able to achieve by working to the standard. Hesperian 03:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

(rem. indent) Don't forget New Guinea. :) Why Australasia instead of Oceania? Is there an actual difference, or is it just preference? --liquidGhoul 03:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

New Guinea is placed in continent "Asia-Tropical", region "Papuasia", along with the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands. New Caledonia, which we currently include in Oceania, is placed in continent "Pacific", region "Southwestern Pacific".
I think the name "Oceania" was never even considered, as "Australasia" as defined contains only Australia and New Zealand.
From the standard:
"The term Australasia, here used for Australia and New Zealand, has been controversial, some members considering that it implies a fusion of Australia with Asia and thus extends from Australia as far north as Indo-China, but others never having understood this connotation. Eventually, because nobody could devise another term to combine Australia with New Zealand, opponents of the term agreed to its use."
Hesperian 03:47, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
That doesn't make sense. New Guinea is connected to the Australian continent, New Zealand no longer is. New Guinea would share a lot of its flora (as it does with fauna) with northern Queensland. It doesn't share much with Asia, in comparison, and shouldn't be a subcategory of it. It isn't even part of the Asian continent. --liquidGhoul 03:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I thought the same thing, but assumed that smarter minds than mine had been hard at work on this and decided that this was the best compromise between botanical, phytogeographical and political imperatives. Hesperian 03:59, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Certainly there have been a lot of thought go into this; from the standard:
"In ed. 1, New Guinea NWG and Bismarck Archipelago BIS were included in Malesia. It has been argued strongly that it makes much more floristic sense to link these two units to the Solomon Islands, previously included in 60 Southwestern Pacific but without strong floristic affinity there. A new region Papuasia is therefore newly recognised to incorporate these three level-3 units. This permits a much better phytogeographical analysis of the region."
Hesperian 04:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Then we'll just have to draw lines on the maps. Otherwise, people may get lost. --liquidGhoul 04:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recruitment

I think we should now try to recruit a few more members to help us out with this project. Atlantis Hawk 03:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I put a note of WP:AWNB a while ago, but didn't get any interest. I know there are heaps of people interested in Australia biota, but haven't joined. I don't really like to spam up people's talk pages, but if you feel up to it, go ahead! ;) --liquidGhoul 06:46, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
And that's what I'm going to do! Atlantis Hawk 10:04, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Frog list

A list of all Australian species of frog (not completely up to date) was created by User:Froggydarb a couple months back. I have cleaned it up, and seperated all those articles into ones with photos and ones without. To my surprise, we have 75 species with a free licence photo! If anyone is bored, please try to make less red links, and create an article. If anyone does create an article, please move it up the list. It is on my watchlist, so I can keep an eye on any new articles which are created. You will also notice, if you go through all the articles that is, that there is not one stub in that list. Something I am very proud of, being a person who doesn't like stubs. Thanks. --liquidGhoul 06:46, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed Veterinary medicine project

There is now a proposed project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Veterinary Medicine to deal with matters of veterinary medicine, a subject which currently has disproportionately low content in wikipedia. Any wikipedia editors who have an interest in working on content related to the subject are encouraged to indicate as much there. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Congratulations

Well done everyone that helped to make the Green and Golden Bell Frog article featured. There's nothing better than a featured article to bring credit to our WikiProject!

Atlantis Hawk 09:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:14, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Marine issue

I have just tagged Fish in Australia, and some of the fish in the category - the main article is an embarrasment, just in case anyone needed to know. ta. SatuSuro 12:17, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] List of introduced fish in Australia

Hello, would anyone in this WP be able to help me by writing a good lead section for this list? Thank you very much. Abbott75 ☺ 04:31, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cherax

Image:Australian_Cherax.jpg is posted at Cherax and wants a home. Can anyone confirm the identity of the handsome fella? Fred ☻ 05:40, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Australian biota template/tag as applied to fish

Hello, i have a question about the use of the Australian biota template on the talk pages of fish which are not endemic to Australia but are widespread throughout many countries and oceans (eg a number of tuna, mackeral, trevally, whiting species etc). Should these taxa be tagged with the Aussie biota template? Is there a page describing the use of the Australian biota template...? i can't seem to find it.

Cheers Kare Kare 11:05, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Centipede Key

Thought I'd let everyone know that there is now a Centipede key available for free on the net. So start IDing and uploading your centipede photos! --liquidGhoul (talk) 00:09, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] John Gould collaboration on Wikisource

English ornithologist and researcher of Australian animals John Gould has been chosen as Wikisource:Collaboration of the Week. Please contribute. —Pengo 04:07, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nomenclature

Dear Aussies, Back in Auld Scotia we are way behind your excellent work on all things living and I wonder if you help me out with a policy issue. I contribute to numerous articles about Scottish islands and they often include references to a wide variety of biota. I find myself constantly coming up against the rather odd editorial style of this fine encyclopedia, which allows workers in different parts of the Tree of Life to use different capitalisations. Do you have an agreed policy of any kind that enables Australian articles with a similar scope to be internally consistent? Ben MacDuiTalk/Walk 13:26, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I know of no policy on this. I think people tend to follow the capitalisation policies of the varius biota projects. e.g. initial caps for most vertebrate groups - birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians - but not fish (weird!). I would favour initial caps for the common names of all species, including plants, because they are, effectively, proper names, and because they are often unambiguous compared with the non-use of caps. In other words, they carry more information. However, there are some strange folk out there who object (out of some misplaced aesthetic?) and are constantly carping about it. Maias (talk) 01:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
So if the answer is that WP:AUS has no system of its own, I presume that if I were inspired to write an article about the fauna of a region of Australia I can choose to ignore the system used by Fauna of Australia - which I think is similar to the one I have used in Scotland, namely capitalise per WP:BIRDS, regardless of the actual article name. The thought that has occurred to me is that if WikiProject Cephalopods (for example) are free to come up with a system of their own for individual creatures, why not WP:Australia, WP:Scotland etc. for references to all creatures great and small set within those national/regional boundaries. Absurd, but perhaps better than no system at all. It may be that you have tried this already without success. Ben MacDuiTalk/Walk 12:03, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Go for it. Maias (talk) 01:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm considering using the text here to engage with WP:Scotland. You are welcome to borrow it for use here if you wish. There is something of a difference as you seem to have a large and well-organised group for wildlife, but in Scotland there are very few of us. Also, the Celts are notoriously as fickle as virgins and may be no more amenable to consistency than the biologists. We shall see. Ben MacDuiTalk/Walk 19:05, 11 May 2008 (UTC)