Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Primates

Ardipithecus Page Needs References

Call for help. No references on a very important page. Can someone please see to this? --1000Faces (talk) 18:41, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I stumbled on this page and made a major restructure, supplying a few basic references as unformatted URLs. Better now, but still needs much work. Adopted the convention of designating Ardipithecus as Ar. rather than A. because as a lay person, I found A. darn confusing with respect to those Australothingies. All the articles I was able to locate now use the Ar. convention (many of them did already). - MaxEnt (talk) 16:23, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Hrm... I may revert the A. -> Ar. changes you made. that convention is used when A. itself would be ambiguous. On a page that only has Ardipithecus info, I would think the context would be enough. - UtherSRG (talk) 16:49, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I would agree, Uther. --Aranae (talk) 18:57, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Lophocebus ugandae

This specie, announced by C.P. Groves, has never been described officially! It's not an accepted taxon and its validity is discussed see: http://primatology.net/2007/02/20/a-new-species-of-gray-cheeked-mangabey-anounced/ --Esculapio (talk) 16:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

To clarify, the taxon has been formally described. Whether it is a junior synonym or a distinct species is the topic of discussion. --Aranae (talk) 17:03, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Could you kindly indicate references of formal description? --Esculapio (talk) 17:59, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

That's a blog. I'm not impressed. The taxon is valid, as it was described in 1912 by Matchie. Groves doesn't need to re-describe it. He only needs to elevate its status, which he has done. I've updated the article to point to the published paper in Primate Conservation. - UtherSRG (talk) 18:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi! Not a member of the Primate Wikiproject, but I noticed this article today. The images on the Grey-cheeked Mangabey article page were taken in Kibale National Park, Uganda, which would mean they are of the new species, if that taxa is accepted. I'll leave it up to you guys to decide where those images should go. Sabine's Sunbird talk 19:21, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm fixing this up now. In reading Groves' write up, he didn't just elevate the ugandae population, but elevated three others as well. I'm working the changes needed.... - UtherSRG (talk) 04:01, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I known this is an old discussion, but I though this was a good place for adding a brief note on taxonomy per Groves. Let's start by saying that I'm not questioning the validity of ugandae, as I do think he presents good evidence for recognizing it as a distinct taxon (and it makes perfect sense from a zoogeographic point of view). However, here's a quote summing up the argument in the paper where ugandae was elevated to species status: "We here have four [albigena, osmani, johnstoni and ugandae] diagnostically distinct taxa, i.e. species". Erh, what??? Following the biological species concept, that has never been an argument for species status, but rather the minimum requirement for subspecies! Should his comment be correct, you have to use another species concept, e.g. the phylogenetic. Structural differences might sound impressive, but alone they can be worth nothing (e.g. separating the human races - if recognized as such - from the skull usually is pretty straight forward). There are quite a lot of other genera in Groves where we're looking at an equally problematic taxomy per BSC, e.g. Callicebus (they can't swim [although this actually is contradicted by some authorities], so if they're separated by rivers they must have been separated for long enough for species status [even though some of the proposed species actually aren't separated by rivers]), Callithrix (hybridization resulting in fully fertile offspring has been documented between some of the "species", and in well-surveyed regions [e.g. eastern Brazil] massive zones inhabited by hybrid populations are known), Saimiri, Trachypithecus, Cercopithecus, Eulemur, etc. Let's just say that the percentage of monotypic para- and allospecies are exceptionally high in some of the genera per Groves taxonomy, and assuming that all these, from an evolutionary point of view, are as non-mobile as tapaculos is a bit difficult to swallow. Of course I am well aware that some of the multiple-split genera are based on the works of others, but I think there can be no doubts that Groves has read and is fully familiar with the work he used as a background for the list. Many moons ago, a very sensible teacher told me that if I ever noticed a biologist virtually only followed/argued for splits (or vice versa), I should take extra care. I'm certainly not arguing for the WikiProject Primates (or WikiProject Mammals, for that matter) suddenly switching to another authority than MSW3 (which overall is excellent), but I am saying that people perhaps should consider checking if the species-limits presented in it as facts actually hold according to whatever species concept this group follows (and I guess that remains the BSC, considering that it [still] is the most widely used); especially in the cases where that taxonomy appears to differ significantly from that of most other material published within the last few years. 212.10.79.182 (talk) 23:53, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Assessments

Is this project going to get an assessment system working, or do we have to use the mammals template for that? Richard001 (talk) 10:44, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to sort out easy-to-use pages for a few aspects of this WikiProject, at the moment I'm stealing a lot of stuff from the bird people who seemed to have things nice and organised. I'll carry on working on it tomorrow, I'm far from finished, because my internet is being slow tonight. Has anyone got any other ideas how to get things moving round here? I'm kinda feeling we need some focus on getting articles to featured status as there is a lot of stubs at the moment. I would recommend getting Chimpanzee featured as the bulk is already there. Jack (talk) 02:01, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay I think I've sorted most things out to work normally, now we just need people to start reviewing our current articles within the Primate WikiProject. You can see pages that need to be created on the Article requests page. Any feedback? Cheers, Jack (talk) 16:19, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

So, [do you want me to/are you going to] add assessment capability to the primates project template? It seems best for projects to have assessment capabilities in their own template so as to avoid adding additional ones. Richard001 (talk) 05:48, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I've added it already, but as there is not a great deal of activity within this WikiProject I was thinking maybe the assessment side should be merge with WikiProject Mammals? There's not much assessment activity there either to be fair though. I reckon once we've got all the species articles to at least stub class then we should work to get some articles to good article/featured article status, some candidates for this are the Mountain Gorilla, Common Chimpanzee or the Aye-Aye. Jack (talk) 12:11, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah, so you have. Allow me to add an audio requests function to the template as well. Richard001 (talk) 06:24, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Wow, you've done that too. Nice work. Richard001 (talk) 06:25, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry! I'm sure we'll never run out of things to be done here though ;) Jack (talk) 11:51, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the audio, we now have Category:Wikipedia requested audio of animals. As that grows we can look at making subcats for more specific projects. But if you want to have an audio request for each primate without any audio (which would be most, and I presume they all have some sort of vocalization!) you could get a bot to do it and create a primates subcat straight away for it. Richard001 (talk) 22:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Importance

I'm starting to look at assessing articles for importance, or at least how to determine which articles are of which importance.

1. Top: Any of the very general articles (primate, ape, monkey, lemur, chimpanzee, gorilla), and the most recognizable species (Ring-tailed Lemur, Golden Lion Tamarin, White-headed Capuchin).
2. High: Any species commonly found in zoos that isn't top-importance, and any family article containing a top-importance species (Hominidae, Lemuridae, Cebidae).
3. Mid: Any species mentioned in the news (GoldenPalace.com Monkey), any family containing a high-importance species
4. Low: All others.

Thoughts? - UtherSRG (talk) 06:26, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

That looks great, I didn't want to have to write up any criteria myself! I think a few high importance articles (Chimpanzee, Ape, Orangutan) will need to be moved up. Jack (talk) 17:30, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

However you do it, try to ensure there are always more articles as you go down in importance (more high than top; more low than mid...) Richard001 (talk) 22:45, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Certainly! - UtherSRG (talk) 00:41, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me, although I suspect there may be more species common to zoos than get much mention in the news. But I could be wrong on that.Rlendog (talk) 01:10, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

A couple more thoughts - several species have are subject to considerable research, and so may be often encountered in literature, but are not necessarily recognizable or common in zoos. I would think those ought to be considered high. An example that comes immediately to mind is the mantled howler. Also, in some cases the family article may be more important that the specific species article. For example, squirrel monkeys are very common in zoos, but how many people would know which specific species is on display? In most cases the zoo wouldn't identify it. In a case like that I think the family should have higher importance than the species.Rlendog (talk) 01:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

All true. Consider my listing then a recommended place to start, with everything subject to fudging. :) (And "squirrel monkey" would be a genus-level article, not family. ;) ) - UtherSRG (talk) 03:55, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

How about giving critically endangered species a higher ranking as well? This list shows the critically endangered primates. I think they should be high importance, maybe even top importance? Jack (talk) 10:20, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

You're right.... conservation status should factor in as well. - UtherSRG (talk) 03:04, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I hope you don't want to also factor in abundance, as that would sort of cancel out the conservation status thing (assuming the more common species were given higher importance, of course). Richard001 (talk) 11:18, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Importance of prehistoric species

So by this scale, all extinct genera and species would be low importance? I've been doing some assessments of quality in the Prehistoric apes category. If we confirm that these should all be low impoprtance, I'll go back and add that. But, I'm not sure it's accurate. Shouldn't some of the prehistoric species be ranked higher importance? Aleta ^Sing 20:07, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Still missing 6 species articles

6 monkeys, 0 prosimians to go...

# Bale Mountains Vervet, Chlorocebus djamdjamensis
# Tantalus Monkey, Chlorocebus tantalus
# Roloway Monkey, Cercopithecus roloway
# Silver Monkey, Cercopithecus doggetti
# Golden Monkey, Cercopithecus kandti
# White-mantled Tamarin, Saguinus melanoleucus
# Red-capped Tamarin, Saguinus pileatus
# Sykes's Monkey, Cercopithecus albogularis
# Lowe's Mona Monkey, Cercopithecus lowei
# Dent's Mona Monkey, Cercopithecus denti
# Siberut Macaque, Macaca siberu

1. Opdenbosch's Mangabey, Lophocebus opdenboschi
2. Johnston's Mangabey, Lophocebus johnstoni
3. Osman Hill's Mangabey, Lophocebus osmani
   # Agile Mangabey, Cercocebus agilis
   # Sanje Mangabey, Cercocebus sanjei
   # Preuss's Red Colobus, Piliocolobus preussi
   # Thollon's Red Colobus, Piliocolobus tholloni
   # Central African Red Colobus, Piliocolobus foai
   # Ugandan Red Colobus, Piliocolobus tephrosceles
   
4. Nepal Gray Langur, Semnopithecus schistaceus
5. Kashmir Gray Langur, Semnopithecus ajax
6. Tarai Gray Langur, Semnopithecus hector
   # Southern Plains Gray Langur, Semnopithecus dussumieri
   
7. Tufted Gray Langur, Semnopithecus priam
   # Indochinese Lutung, Trachypithecus germaini
   # Shortridge's Langur, Trachypithecus shortridgei
   # Indochinese Black Langur, Trachypithecus ebenus
   # Sarawak Surili, Presbytis chrysomelas
   # Natuna Island Surili, Presbytis natunae
   # Sibree's Dwarf Lemur, Cheirogaleus sibreei
   # Microcebus bongolavensis
   # Microcebus danfossi
   # Microcebus lokobensis
   # Sanford's Brown Lemur, Eulemur sanfordi
   # Red-fronted Brown Lemur, Eulemur rufus
   # Collared Brown Lemur, Eulemur collaris
   # White-collared Brown Lemur, Eulemur albocollaris
   # Western Lesser Bamboo Lemur, Hapalemur occidentalis
   # Southern Lesser Bamboo Lemur, Hapalemur meridionalis
   # Aeecl's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur aeeclis
   # Ahmanson's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur ahmansoni
   # Ankarana Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur ankaranensis
   # Betsileo Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur betsileo
   # Fleurete's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur fleuretae
   # Grewcock's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur grewcocki
   # Hubbard's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur hubbardi
   # James' Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur jamesi
   # Manasamody Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur manasamody
   # Ring Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur milanoii
   # Otto's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur otto
   # Petter's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur petteri
   # Randrianasoli's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur randrianasoli
   # Sahamalaza's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur sahamalazensis
   # Scott's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur scottorum
   # Seal's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur seali
   # Hawk's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur tymerlachsoni
   # Wright's Sportive Lemur, Lepilemur wrighti
   # Moore's Woolly Lemur, Avahi mooreorum
   # Sambirano Woolly Lemur, Avahi unicolor
   # Silky Sifaka, Propithecus candidus
   # Perrier's Sifaka, Propithecus perrieri
   # Decken's Sifaka, Propithecus deckenii
   # Crowned Sifaka, Propithecus coronatus
   # Silvery Greater Galago, Otolemur monteiri
   # Cross River Bushbaby, Galago cameronensis
   # Gabon Bushbaby, Galago gabonensis
   # Malawi Bushbaby, Galago nyasae
   # Betsileo Woolly Lemur (Avahi betsileo)
   # Southern Woolly Lemur (Avahi meridionalis)
   # Peyrieras' Woolly Lemur (Avahi peyrierasi)
   # Ramanantsoavana's Woolly Lemur (Avahi ramanantsoavana)

Kaldari (talk) 20:41, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

If we can get all of these to stub level like Silver Monkey that'd be great. For reference a more comprehensive list of primate articles requested is at the article requests page. Jack (talk) 18:18, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Excellent work folks! - UtherSRG (talk) 02:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Excellent work yourself! I'd love to be helping out but exams are taking all my time at the moment. Cheers, Jack (talk) 08:09, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Prosimians are now complete (at least until a new species is identified)!!!Rlendog (talk) 23:13, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I guess 4 were added, but they have all been addressed, so we are back to completion on the prosimians.Rlendog (talk) 22:20, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Missing species articles are below 10!Rlendog (talk) 02:17, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Now it's only six. I made "Nepal Gray langur", but for some reason, sub family and super family taxation aren't showing up. I don't know how to fix it. If somebody could handle that, it would be appreciated. Yojimbo501 (talk) 18:10, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Could somebody put my name on the list?

I don't know how to and I would like to be part of this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yojimbo501 (talk • contribs) 16:39, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Yojimbo501, great to hear you want to help out. It was me who made it so difficult to add your name to this project before, so sorry about that. I've made it easier now, just click the link under the Participants heading on the main page and add your name. Or even easier just click here and add your name. Cheers, Jack (talk) 13:03, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Evolution of color vision in primates

An expert is needed for a look over this article: Evolution of color vision in primates. No time to do it myself, although it is an interesting subject which was covered nicely in The Ancestor's Tale. Cheers, Jack (talk) 12:22, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Primate is the new collaboration of the month

Just a heads up to say that Primate is the new mammal collaboration of the month over at WikiProject Mammals. Hopefully we should be able to get this very important article up to FA status. I've got a pretty good book on primate social systems and primate evolution which should be helpful, once my exams are over I'll be a bit more help. Cheers, Jack (talk) 19:06, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Uzungwa Red Colobus

Shouldn't this species be called Udzungwa Red Colobus? I know that MSW3 writes Uzungwa, but it is named after the Udzungwa Mountains. Or is there a reason for omitting the "d"? Regards --80.108.59.151 (talk) 22:20, 5 June 2008 (UTC) (de:Benutzer:Bradypus)

I think both names are used and according to this paper there is a reason for it in a book by Moyer & Lovett (in press) though I can't seem to access the book to find out why. Udzungwa is the proper usage, not sure why MSW3 gets it wrong? Cheers, Jack (talk) 21:35, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Redirects on "G. species" disambiguation pages

Please see this discussion so that we can come to a conclusion about redirects used on "G. species" disambiguation pages.

Thank you, Neelix (talk) 00:47, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Next task: Structure standardization

I propose that the next task, after all articles under the order "Primate" are created, be to standardize our articles, so that for each taxonomic rank the articles share the same structure. For example, every article at the genus level should share the same section headings in the same order, with the exception of sections unique to each article. Right now there is much variability in structure, so I offer this illustration of why we need standardization:

• Chimpanzee uses "Measurements" as its first section;
• Gorilla uses "Physical characteristics" as its third section;
• Orangutan uses "Ecology and appearance" (a mix of two sections) as its second section.

There is certainly more variation for other primate articles. This would apply for family, species, and so on (and super- and sub- classifications). The standard decided on for one taxonomic rank would not necessarily apply to other ranks.

Let's discuss the preferred section headings and order. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 07:29, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Good idea, another thing to work on is the rating and importance templates on primate talk pages. When everything is tagged then we can start work on improving the top importance articles. I would suggest headings per primate : Anatomy and morphology. Physiology. Habitat and distribution. etc. Although I do like the section "Physical characteristics". Jack (talk) 11:11, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Cercopithecus a. albogularis in Angola?

A few days ago, I did a fair deal of editing to Sykes' Monkey and associated pages, among others removing Zanzibar Sykes' Monkey as an alternative name for the nominate subspecies, as I, without checking other sources, relied upon MSW3 where it is claimed that the type locality is Angola [1]. However, I've now come to doubt this, and suspect the type of Cercopithecus a. albogularis really is from Zanzibar (in which case Zanzibar Sykes' Monkey should be re-added both to the Sykes' Monkey page and the Guenon page). Indeed, I suspect Sykes' Monkey isn't found in Angola at all, and the NW Angolan population actually is Cercopithecus m. mitis ([2]). Could someone check if MSW3 messed these up? I only have access to limited literature here, and won't be able to check more thoroughly until monday. 212.10.81.215 (talk) 19:53, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll send Colin Groves an email and see what he says. - UtherSRG (talk) 02:59, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Well, I did solve one of them (a mistake of mine, really). The type locality for Cercopithecus m. mitis is indeed Angola, and this is also what MSW3 says (not sure how I missed that... evidently just checked the wiki article where it, until a few sec's ago, said Malawi). That still doesn't solve the main issue of the type locality for Cercopithecus a. albogularis. 212.10.81.215 (talk) 03:35, 19 July 2008 (UTC)