Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life

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Tucker, J.K. 2004 Catalog of recent and fossil turrids (Mollusca: Gastropoda). Zootaxa 682:1-1295 (large .pdf file)

My email address is on my user page. Thanks in advance. JoJan (talk) 13:06, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I've received the text. JoJan (talk) 18:15, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Carl Linnaeus – almost GA

The article on Carl Linnaeus is very close to being recognised as a Good Article. Unfortunately, the person who nominated it appears to be absent. The only outstanding issue is that the short section on "Linnean taxonomy" needs to be referenced. This is basically a summary of Linnean taxonomy, but that, too, is unreferenced. If anyone here can help with referencing that section – or even re-writing it – it would be much appreciated, and would be a huge step towards getting this very important article raised to GA level. --Stemonitis (talk) 06:55, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

The New Guinea Singing Dog

New Guinea Singing Dog
Conservation status
Vulnerable (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification (unresolved)
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammal
Order:	Carnivora
Family:	Canidae
Genus:	Canis
Species:	C. lupus
Subspecies:	C. l. dingo
Trinomial name
Canis lupus dingo (Meyer, 1793)

New Guinea Singing Dog
Other names	New Guinea Dingo Singing Dog Singer New Guinea Highland Dog New Guinea Wild Dog Hallstrom Dog New Guinea Singing Dingo NGSD NGD
Origin	Papua New Guinea
Dog (domestic dog)

Should the taxobox for the NGSD be replaced with a new Canis lupus dingo dogbox? When you go to replace it, one is confronted with a note with citations I am not qualified to rule on saying not to remove it as the taxonomic status is in dispute. Then opposition is met from Wikipedia Users who cite various more papers saying that the taxon "halstromi" should be valid, again giving reasons that seem persuasive to me, but at the same time maybe not all that persuasive. But according to Wikipedia articles based on MSW3 such as Subspecies of Canis lupus, Canis, and so on, "halstromi" is a taxonomic synonym for Canis lupus dingo, which is no longer restricted to the Australian Dingo. Chrisrus (talk) 16:43, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. I can't say which argument is correct as I haven't read much of the original referenced work, but I would point out that the current taxobox on the article still says the taxon name is Canis lupus dingo and we already have an article for that taxon: Canis lupus dingo. One taxobox per taxon. If the taxobox is to stay on the New Guinea Singing Dog article with its "unresolved" status, then it shouldn't be Canis lupus dingo. Rkitko ^(talk) 17:44, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

While it is fairly evident that the NGSD is closest to the dingo, whether it constitutes a separate taxon is, as you say, disputed, although the dispute I remember form my last visit wasn't between halstromi and dingo. I have found that the editors of that article are immensely knowledgeable about their subject, and would be inclined to leave them to their own devices, or discuss there. Perhaps though, if there is an ongoing academic dispute, both taxonomies should be presented? Rich Farmbrough, 23:23, 31 October 2011 (UTC).

Thank you both for your kind replies and advice.

To reply to Rkitko, thank you for your interest in this interesting problem. I have started a new section below that I hope you would reply of one such paper. I agree with you completely; there should be only one article with the taxobox "Canis lupus dingo", and I think you will agree that this article should be Canis lupus dingo. The articles about particular varieties of that taxon, such as, but not limited to, Australian Dingo and New Guinea Singing Dog, however, might get either a dogbox maybe not unlike the one below one or, if given a taxobox, it should be Canis lupus digno var. I'm not sure which. Below I will provide those under discussion there.

But first, to reply to Rich, You are right that it is disputed, but I have yet to find any discussion of higher taxa that seems to list halstromi. Wikipedia's Subspecies of Canis lupus, for example, lists "halstromi" as a taxonomic synonym for "C.l.dingo" in the same way they do with all former subspecies of dog, as for example Canis aegyptius or Canis aquaticus or any of the old dog subspecies that has nowhere to go when they made the dog itself a subspecies it can't have subspecies itself. The only ones who speak of Canis halstromi or Canis lupus halstromi or Canis dingo halstromi, they can't seem to agree which it should be, are only papers specifically about the New Guinea Singing dog. I wonder if you are aware of any lists of mammals of the world or the Carnivora or the Canidae it as a valid taxon, but I'm guessing few if any do. With regard to your "the dispute I remember.....dingo", please do share your recollection, no matter how vague, I'm interested. And with regard to "I have found....their own devices..." I'm sorry but that's not the way it is. The dominant expert there, Oldsingerman, knows alot about the dogs because he owns many of them and is trying to save them, but freely admits he knows little about taxonomy and zoology and such. He favors the taxon "halstromi" be valid, on the grounds that it'd be better for the dogs that way, and he cares about them having a bright future. He does agree that we should go with such standard WP references as MSW3, and therefore Canis lupus dingo, and then adding "var. halstromi", I suppose. So please join the discussion we have ongoing there and don't worry about leaving us to our own devices. \

Anyway, more to the point, here are the infoboxes under discussion:

Edit war over evolution

On the article Monera, an IP user has just changed the article Monera for the fourth time in favour of a view point were evolution is invalid. What is the bureaucratic protocol to declare that there is an edit war and have the article locked? As it stands, I think, the article is in good shape (before revisions by IP user) so will not be harmed. Thanks --Squidonius (talk) 21:27, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Talk with the editor at the talk page. Revert the obvious incorrect changes, but retain good contributions. Explain the rules of WP (in this case WP:RS, WP:V, WP:NOR) and see what the response is. If that does not help, contact me again. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 21:52, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE might also be appropriate for this one. I have warned the user, albeit with a cookie-cutter template. A more personal explanation might be better.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 22:02, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The place of the New Guinea Singing Dog on the canid branch of the tree of life

Please comment on this paper.

http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/AM07005 http://newguinea-singing-dog-conservation.org/Tidbits/AusMamPap.pdf

We're trying to give this article, NGSD, the right kind of infobox and otherwise find the proper place for it in our system.

Thanks for the link to the full pdf. I find that paper very unsettling. First, there's not a single taxonomist or systematist author. Second, all of the evidence they cite and discuss (more like a review than primary data) is largely anecdotal; there is very little data to go on. There are no statistical tests of the significance of the data. And clearly the authors have a POV to push since the lead author is associated with the NGSD conservation group (based in Oregon?). I tend to err on the side of caution as well and I would advocate, like they do, that this is an evolutionary significant unit for conservation purposes. But what that unit is called - a variety, subspecies, or species - is extremely unclear. Their argument for species status is not compelling. I may just be in my first year of a PhD program in taxonomy and systematics, but it's already clear to me that this paper would have required more data (molecular systematics, morphometrics) to be convincing. I'm surprised it was published. Regardless, I would be very careful when discussing it in the text or using it for citations. Avoid using it as the sole citation for an assertion, while still avoiding weasel words. Discuss it in the context of the uncertainty of the taxon.

As for the kind of infobox, at this point I see no reason to keep the taxobox on the article. The dogbox would be fine. Rkitko ^(talk) 14:24, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Is that your opinion of the paper itself, or the references upon which the paper is based — or perhaps both? Specifically, the discussion at the NGSD article currently seems to revolve around the statement in THE NEW GUINEA SINGING DOG: ITS STATUS AND SCIENTIFIC IMPORTANCE at the end of page 47 and continuing on page 48: "It is, at minimum, an evolutionarily significant unit, and, at maximum, could be its own distinct species (Simonsen 1976; Gollan 1982; S Bulmer 2001; Bininda-Emonds 2002; Koler-Matznick et al. 2002; Clark et al. 2004; Savolainen et al. 2004). Therefore, for conservation purposes, the wild singing dog should be considered a unique taxon until the contrary is clearly demonstrated", which I used as justification for the "Unresolved" paramater in the taxobox. But it appears the issue is more complex than just relating to that parameter in the taxobox... Did you (or anyone else who understands this stuff) examine SIMONSEN V, 1976. Electrophoretic studies on the blood proteins of domestic dogs and other Canidae. Hereditas 82: 7–28 [1] or SAVOLAINEN P, LEITNER T, WILTON A, MATISOO-SMITH E, LUNDEBERG J, 2004. A detailed picture of the origin of the Australian dingo, obtained from the study of mitochondrial DNA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 101: 12387-12390. [2] or CLARK LA, FAMULA TR and MURPHY KE, 2004. Evaluation of a rapid single multiplex microsatellite-based assay for use in forensic genetic investigations in dogs. American Journal of Veterinary Research 65:1446 – 1450. [3] (which seems to cost money to view) or any other of those eight references for that statement in the paper? If not, could you possibly take a look and give some feedback? I don't know if that information changes anything, but this stuff is beyond my layman's understanding of genetics. Mojoworker (talk) 22:15, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I think that I can contribute to this. I read the first paper you referenced and it already listed the NGSD (Hallstromdog) as a seperate species and when you go by the differences in blood enzymes the jackal would be closer to the domestic dog. However this is at odds with the genetic data published in the second referenced article which clearly shows a connection with other dogs as well as the dingo. Another published article (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7290/full/nature08837.html) clearly showed that they are descended from wolves and among domestic dogs belong to the "Asian Group" together with dingoes, Chows, Akuitas and Shar-Peis. I also read a newly published scientifc article on the origin of the dingo, NGSD and Polynesian dogs (which can be found here: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/09/06/rspb.2011.1395.full.pdf) and it states: The study of mtDNA among Australian dingoes and Polynesian dogs showed that archaeological samples of pre-European dog from across Polynesia (the Cook Islands, Hawaii and New Zealand) carried only two haplotypes: Arc1 and Arc2 [35]. It also showed that Australian dingoes carried only haplotype A29 or haplotypes differing from A29 by a single mutation, indicating that the dingo population was founded from a small number of dogs carrying a single mtDNA haplotype (A29). Importantly, all three haplotypes are typical for East Asian dogs: Arc2 and A29 are absent and Arc1 rarely found west of the Himalayas [9]. Furthermore, two New Guinea singing dogs (NGSDs; a feral dog from the New Guinean highlands, close in morphology and behaviour to Australian dingoes but clearly distinguishable [36]) were shown to carry haplotypes A29 and A79 (which differs by one substitution from A29). Since A29 is also found among East Asian dogs, an origin from domestic dogs seems clear for these two wild populations.

...

This study shows a distinct pattern in the geographical distribution of the two Polynesian dog mtDNA haplotypes Arc1 and Arc2, and the dingo and NGSD founder mtDNA haplotype A29, with a total frequency of 12 per cent in Southern China, 17 per cent in southeast Asia and 50 per cent in Indonesia, but complete absence in samples from Taiwan and the Philippines. This gives a clear indication that Polynesian dogs as well as dingoes and NGSDs trace their ancestry back to South China through Mainland Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Thus, there is no indication that these dogs were introduced via Taiwan and the Philippines together with the expansion of the Neolithic culture and Austronesian languages, as suggested in some theories about Polynesian origins.

So it clearly indicates an origin in Southern China and a route via Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Also that they are not a seperate species. So for several years now genetic analyses do not support a classification as a seperate species albeit the term Canis hallstromi is still in use. Morphological data also doesn't support it, to a huge degree due to the high morphological range of the domestic dog and as even Matznick states the physical capabilities of the NGSD are not as unique as often stated, since the Lundehund is very similar in that regard. Furthermore I know of no source that ever stated that NGSD males have an actual breeding cycle and an annual breeding cycle for females is not unknown among the domestic dog (and NGSD females can have three heats per year), it is simply not the most common. Furthermore reduced relative brain size, hypertrophied tail form (curled tail), reduction of facial expression with a stronger emphasis on phonetic expression and a less sophisticated social system when compared to examined grey wolves are all characteristics of the domestic dog and they are shared by the NGSD. So neither genetic nor morphological data support a classification as a separate species from the dog. In addition a big part of the few founding dogs of the captive population already came from humans so simply classifying them as wild is also on shaky grounds, but this last argument we should not use.

Now the biological definition of species also doesn't fit, especially not when all of the wild population, or at least the major part, has mixed with other dogs. Two seperate species don't mix so readily and so extensively. I know that at least some authors state that all members of the genus Canis can produce fertile offspring. I don't know of the basis of that statement only that it was proven for lupus, aureus, simensis, rufus, latrans and possibly lycaon (if that is a seperate wolf-species), and the gray wolf and domestic dog are considered one species due to proven voluntary mating when sufficent number of partners where there (so neither a shortage of dogs or wolves), this was under captive conditions. And an average unrestricted fertility of the hybrids and no sudden increase in genetic disorders even when only bred among each other since the first generation of hybrids was only proven when you mix gray wolves with domestic dogs.

Now, as far as is known to me the taxonomic classification of the NGSD is according to Mammal Species of the World the NGSD is under Canis lupus dingo http://www.bucknell.edu/msw3/browse.asp?id=14000751 and the term hallstromi is listed among the synonyms which also contains many old names of the dingo. Also the entry for c.l. dingo also stated as a comment "domestic dog" which is also in the entry for c.l. familiaris http://www.bucknell.edu/msw3/browse.asp?id=14000752 . Under the entry for Canis lupus http://www.bucknell.edu/msw3/browse.asp?id=14000738 it is stated Includes the domestic dog as a subspecies, with the dingo provisionally separate--artificial variants created by domestication and selective breeding (Vilá et al., 1999; Wayne and Ostrander, 1999; Savolainen et al., 2002). Although this may stretch the subspecies concept, it retains the correct allocation of synonyms. Corbet and Hill (1992) suggested treating the domestic dog as a separate species in SE Asia. However the seperate species argument doesn't held up for the reasons I have mentioned.

So I am sure that the current classification of the NGSD is c.l. dingo and since the NGSD has the mtDNA type A29 like the Australian dingo that is as far as I know regarded as the current justification for its subspecies classifcation. However, it is clearly seperate from the Australian and Thai version of the dingo due to morphology and also phonetic and social characteristics (all based on the captive population of course), therefore it needs a seperate article in my eyes just like most breeds of dog have, also the topic has the necessary amount of material and holds enough interest for a seperate article.

Due to all this: A classification as a subspecies is basically just as arbitrary as that for race or breed and when we cannot get rid of the c.l. dingo in the taxobox it has to stay. But the article needs to state the other terms that were once and are often still in use along with the published material on genetic and morphological analysis. I hope I could help. --Inugami-bargho (talk) 19:47, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Taxonomy of Canis in general

Well, the taxonomy of Canis is a nightmare, with species, semi-species and subspecies blending neatly into each other, and likely several paraphyletic groups at the species level. Just to top it off, the species barriers seem to be social (pre-zygotic) rather than genetic, and with domestication humans are having a hand in it as well. I think it would be useful to accnowledge that in Canis there are possibly no good species, they are as much human constructs as a biological reality. Petter Bøckman (talk) 15:45, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't know exactly what you mean, but I've noticed a few things that cause problems for Wikipedia. First of all, even though the dog is a domesticated wolf, now Canis lupus isn't doesn't jive with the English (just to mention one language) "wolf" because dogs aren't wolves and dogs are Canis lupus too, so unless we merge the articles wolf and dog we have no article for Canis lupus in general anymore. Next, the dog is now two taxa even though one is the other gone feral or wild, Canis lupus familiaris and C.l.dingo, which causes a mess for wikipedia in terms of what to put where and how much each article should cover. Next, the Golden Jackal on the one hand and the other two jackals on the other turn out now to belong to two differnet branches, so the article Jackal has headaches. All existing red wolves, and maybe all Canis lupus rufus or Canis rufus turn out to be Coydogs, but the editors of that article can't handle the truth so it's a mess. The "Canis latrans" around here NYS are maybe 80% latrans, tops, it turns out, the rest is lupus, mostly wolf but partly dog. I could go on, but wikipedia is steadily sorting through it all, it's kinda fun to watch/be a part of, sort of a puzzle. But this NGSD article has been a headache from day one. Chrisrus (talk) 05:00, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, it is a puzzle indeed! There are at least three distinct problems mixed in together:

• The Species problem, just how do one define a species? Below the species level, what really defines a taxon?
• Paraphyly, how do you treat paraphyletic, but obviously useful groups (like "wolf")? Even worse, what do you do with polyphyletic (hybrid) species?
• Language vs phylogeny, what do you do when the two don't match?

The point I was trying to make (and which I think apply to the NGSDs) is thet there is quite possibly no one correct solution here. Petter Bøckman (talk) 08:43, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

This is, of course, not specific to Canis, but is a general problem in groups where geographically and morpologically distinct populations are quite capable of inter-breeding and do so regularly. The number of species of Ophrys (bee orchids) recognized in reliable sources varies from about 10 to 375! There are two different issues in Wikipedia: which entities should have their own articles, which should surely be determined by interest and the amount of information available, and what (if anything) should be put in taxoboxes. I'm a little concerned that some editors (not those who have commented here) seem to want the latter to determine the former. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:01, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

A huge part of the problem is also the classification of the domestic dog and especially in the english speaking world it seems hard to accept for many that domestic dog and gray wolf are the same species. Partly this comes from the inconsistency on what is regard a typical characteristic of the domnestic dog (e.g. many see lack of regurgitating of food as normal while others as a sign of degeneration since other dogs still show it perfectly [even males]) as well as idological reasons (e.g. the arbitrary seperation of nature and culture). So yeah, we probably should have a different article for canis lupus than the current one, but I don't know whether such an article would ever make it. Does anybody here know whether such an article would find support?--Inugami-bargho (talk) 19:47, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

For some time, a search for Canis lupus linked to the article Wolf. Then, when it was pointed out that the article wasn't talking about the whole of Canis lupus per se when it said things such thing such as their being less adaptable to civilized times than coyotes and many other such statements, a hatnote was added to indicate that the article was about wolves, not dogs, which are also canis lupus. Then, for awhile, the hatnote was removed and Canis lupus searchers were sent directly to Subspecies of Canis lupus, I suppose because it was the closest thing to an article about Canis lupus in general and if such an article as you describe would be created, it might incorporate that one. Then, perhaps reasoning that "Canis lupus" searchers were probably looking for the Wolf article, Canis lupus searchers were direct back to the "wolf" article again, but hatnote was re-added and changed so that the if anyones clicks on the hatnote Canis lupus link at the top of the wolf article, s/he is sent to the subspecies article. That's how it stands today.

The dog article and every doginfobox was at first assigned C.l.familiaris and there was only one article, Dingo, which was also Canis lupus dingo. Then it was noticed that halstromi Australian Dingo" and Canis lupus dingo was created to embark all dogs so classified. Meanwhile, the article "Dog" was changed so that it would cover both c.l.familiaris and c.l.dingo, and these two were tied together using the brackets around the term "[domestic dog]", in imitation of the way it's done in MSW3, but no one seems to understand" because editors regularly change it because they don't understand why the domestic dog and the dingo are both the "[domestic dog]" in the chart. So some other way to make MSW3's point in the chart seems needed. Chrisrus (talk) 01:17, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

What a mess! The problem here is that we seek to make articles to cover specific phenomena, and these phenomena aren't clear-cut phylogenetic units. As a zoologist I very much like to see articles follow scientific naming, but in this case case I'm tempted to say "screw phylogeny" and stick to the vernacular expressions. There really should be an article on wolf, on dog, on dingo, on domestic dog etc. The relevant phylogenetic information clearly should be given in each, but should not dictate what articles to write. (This is why I prefer to stick to wild animals, things get difficult when humans start meddling) Petter Bøckman (talk) 08:21, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, great. This is one of the reasons I don't get why the english wikipedia doesn't have a peer review system that prevents that every edit of a site can be seen immedidiately. Ok, lets see.

I think the main problem was the original wolf article because it wasn't in accordance with the facts. I just checked it and its worse than I imagined since it isn't even in accordance with the sources it states (e.g. it references MSW3 for the classifcation of subspecies but excludes familiaris and dingo nonetheless). It is the old problem of generalization of things that are not the same. So basically that one would need to be changed first but I doubt we can do it if there is such massive resistance to it. I think a new article should be done and reviewed before published. The chart implies that dingoes don't have the traits typical for domestic dogs. The main problem we would face, based on what you wrote, would be the opposition against stating that the domestic dog is a gray wolf. In addition the article on the domestic dog needs to be seriously reviewed. But that is such a huge project that we would need several dozen authors.--Inugami-bargho (talk) 08:25, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

As an outsider in "dog matters", it seems to me that Petter Bøckman is right. What readers want is articles on topics they expect to be different, i.e. wolf, dingo, domestic dog, etc. These terms have clear meanings regardless of the taxon referred to. By the way, I think it's wrong to say that "the domestic dog is a gray wolf". The domestic dog and the gray wolf may belong to the same species, but this doesn't make their ordinary language meanings the same. (A similar issue of language arises regularly at Ape and Primate, where people try to impose the usage "apes" = "hominoids including humans", instead of reporting this as one of the usages attested to in reliable sources.)

I think that we also sometimes run into trouble with plant articles by not separating out cultivated and wild forms. Popular ornamental plants which have many cultivars and have probably been been massively crossed, for example, don't fit well into taxonomic hierarchies. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:16, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

No offense but "ordinary language meanings" doesn't count. Wikipedia is basically a lexicon and not a forum where people get their expectations confirmed. Furthermore you are wrong in thinking that the canine terms you mentioned have clear meanings. I know of a t least three definitions for dingo as well as three different usages regarding what dogs are dingoes and what not. The same with the Australian term of "wild dog". It is the same with the term domestic dog, for some this includes all canids with a history of domestication so including the dingo, for others the term only means pet varietes and either including or excluding working dogs, for others again feral dogs are domestic dogs but for others not, others call feral dogs stray dogs or wild dogs, it is the same with horses. To go deeper, if we would take such "ordinary language meanings" into account we would have to classify British Bulldogs as perfectly healthy because owners and breeders might be offended, despite the fact that from an objective point of view they are cripples. So we cannot afford to take "ordinary language meaning" into account when we want to have good and reliable articles.--Inugami-bargho (talk) 07:11, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

The idea of having one article about Canis lupus the taxon is maybe a good one. It be Subspecies of Canis lupus and about the history of the term, how it used to be just wolves and then started to cover dogs when it was determined that they are domesticated from wolves, and so on. The idea that we should merge the articles Wolf and dog just because taxonomy has done so just not reasonable, neither in English nor German nor any of the other languages. Chrisrus (talk) 13:53, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I think your may have misunderstood my stance, Inugami-bargho. Of course we need an article on Canis lupus in it′s full meaning. It just does not need to be the article "Wolf". Wikipedia has plenty of room, there′s room for both, and with links and room to explain the changing meaning of terms, no reader needs to feel confused over where to find what on Wikipedia. Petter Bøckman (talk) 19:22, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

And I think you misunderstand me. When you say wolf in science you mean Canis lupus unless you first stated what subspecies you are talking about. For the respective subspecies you need to name the non-taxonomic name. That in english speaking countries they often exclude dogs from that is because there is such a problem for most people in recognizing that both are the same species, as far as I know that is due to the phenomenon that most dog researchers have no idea about wolves and most wolf-researchers do not even own a dog. So yes the article "wolf" would have to be about the whole of Canis lupus especially since the current article implies that all these wild populations are the same, but there are differences among them as well (e.g. North American wolves were often eradicated after only 20 years of European colonization while in Europe it was only successfull in the 19th century and even then only slowly). Therefore we need this one article stating the basic facts and including the current accepted list of subspecies and from there links to articles on each subspecies, including articles (if possible) on domestication, mythology and the like. This article can actually be very short since more detailed information on the various wolf-populations can be covered in the various subspecies entries. I don't see how that could be confusing. --Inugami-bargho (talk) 08:39, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Your suggestion would have been the sensible one if phylogeny was the main criterium for organizing articles. However, phylogeny is but one of several criteria, and the size of any article depends on what people want to put in it. A lot of people are interested in wolfs, no matter how short the article could have been after your suggestion, it would soon bloat out and become the de facto main article. Your suggestion that wolfs really are not a single species is interesting, but would violate WP:OR and WP:WEIGHT until the species is formally split, and I don't see that happening anytime soon. If we do not insist on fighting a never ending uphill battle, the sensible thing to do is to have an article on Wolf (Canis lupus) with all that normally goes into a species article, and treat the subspecies and the cultivar (dog) is small sections (a couple of paragraphs) with links to their respective main articles. Petter Bøckman (talk) 10:42, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether people would bloat the article or not. You can't just give in to pressure because of what people want, when you go by that criteria the wolf article would contain info about the thylacine or the maned wolf as well. And I didn't say that wolves are not a single species. There is only one species named gray wolf and it consists of several variations that differ from each other, e.g. polar wolves are on average much bigger and heavier than Italian wolves but they are still the same species. " If we do not insist on fighting a never ending uphill battle, the sensible thing to do is to have an article on Wolf (Canis lupus) with all that normally goes into a species article, and treat the subspecies and the cultivar (dog) is small sections (a couple of paragraphs) with links to their respective main articles." That was what I was saying the whole time. However we would need to have the actual full range meaning in the size it would be from e.g. the weight of a toy dog to that of a mastino and there we could have a problem. We would need a fool proof argument for the inclusion of the domestic dog since many will probably oppose that no matter what behavioral and genetic examinations tell us. Anyway the best approach would be to first create an appropriate article on the user page of an author, when that one is sufficient it can be published and we should request for a protection of the article. Maybe even have it locked.--Inugami-bargho (talk) 14:36, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Are you talking at cross purposes? There should be one article for Dog, one for Wolf, and one for Dingo, so the criticism about "giving in to what people want" does not apply unless you are arguing that all of these be merged into one Canis lupus article, which alternately seem to be advocating and then not advocating. But if you really want to merge these into one Canis lupus article, please try that on German Wikipedia first and see what happens there. I can't believe that's what you are really suggesting, but that's what the Peters and I were arguing against, and what you seemed to be arguing for when you object to "ordinary language meanings" and "giving people what they want". If on the other hand you'd like to have an additional article about Canis lupus the taxon, please go ahead and create it out of the existing article Subspecies of Canis lupus, as that's the existing article about that referent and could be expanded, for example it presently lacks a history of the taxon, starting with Linnaeus, and other things. Then you could move that article to Canis lupus and let the wolf and dog articles continue to just talk about wolves and dogs as that's quite enough for each of them. Chrisrus (talk) 18:35, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The Case of the Red Wolf

Please everyone please read the article Red Wolf and its discussion page TALK:Red wolf and comment here and/or there. There are some similar issues and some different ones and room for improvement and lessons to be learned for the wider project. Chrisrus (talk) 18:05, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

First, there are some debates, not all of which are closed, on the talk page that may need resolution.

But to my mind, the problem is this: about half-way through the Taxonomy section the reader is told that all existant red wolves are coywolves, based on DNA evidence. The lead says nothing about this, calling it simply a "canid", which isn't particularly enlightening. I can't evaluate the genetic evidence, but it seems that for at least a decade the evidence has been conclusive that two branches on the tree of life in this case have merged into one, and it seems to me that if that's true and the last word has been said about that, it should be in the lead because it goes to the heart of what this animal fundementally is, which is a rare and to my mind significant thing, because even though Canis hybrids and others aren't so rare, they rarely form "true-breeding" sustained populations, and in no other case has mammology ever recognized one as a taxon. So it seems to me one of the most important things about it, what is fundementally is, is not in the lead, and that the way the Taxonomy section is done undue weight seems to lie on the theory that it's not a coywolf if that's no longer a tenable theory. But as I'm not qualified to evaluate the various points of view on the subject I wanted to ask before changing the lead based on only the second half of the Taxonomy section. Chrisrus (talk) 00:36, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

(Copy of my post at TALK:Red wolf) OK, my two øre:

First off, there's no one good solution to the species problem of the red wolf. No form of scientific classification really handle ambiguity well. We will have to accept that we are left with a "best of a bad situation" as the optimum solution. As long as everyone realize that whatever solution is found, it will have flaws, then we should be able to find consensus.

From a phylogenetic POW, the problem with the red wolf is not really that it appears to be a good species ecologically, but that wolf appears to be one too. Phylogenetic nomenclature is based on species neatly splitting in two and the ancestor species then going extinct. This assumption if of course just a model, not real life, and every now and then we run into situations where this assumption very clearly do not hold. There are quite a few instances of paraphyletic species out there, and hybridization of recently diverged species may be more common in mammals than assumed, our own speciation from the chimpanzee being a point in question. We just need to find how to best handle this situation in the taxobox, and make sure the whole mess is explained clearly in the text.

As far as I can see, the red wolf as a hybrid species seems fairly conclusive. Then again, hybrid species are species too, or can at least give rise to species if allowed to evolve. At what point do a species cease to be "just a hybrid" and start becoming a species of it's own? Petter Bøckman (talk) 18:32, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all you've done with regard to this. Please, don't stop there. As I said before (scroll up), the problem is the "lede" sentence(s). We need to state in reader-friendly language what it is. How about "a hybrid "species"" or a descriptive phrase to that effect? "Canid" just isn't very enlightening. Don't worry so much about taxonomy. Chrisrus (talk) 23:31, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

The terminology would be "suspected/presumed/hypothesized/whatever hybridogenic species" (or hybridogenic species if you prefer it blue). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:33, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Ok, then, please do go there and make that change because not just the body but also the lead should say in as upfront and clear a way as appropriate that this is a hybrid species or a hybridogenic species. Because it still takes to much digging for the reader to understand this. Chrisrus (talk) 00:00, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Blackbacked and Side-striped Jackals:

Dear WikiProject Tree of Life page watcher;

I found this uncited section here Canid_hybrid#Genetic_considerations. We could, I suppose, delete it on the grounds that i's uncited, but the context kinda needs it and it sounds like it was written by someone who knows what they are talking about and seems logical. So instead, I'm trying to cite it. But I'm not really able without some help from an expert. It needs checking and citing or correcting if the numbers something's wrong. Could this here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC53565/pdf/pnas01030-0152.pdf be used to cite the part about the Black-backed Jackal and the Side-striped Jackal?

Thank you for your kind attention! Chrisrus (talk) 06:10, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I've found some sources for the chromosome numbers, but not yet for hybridization. Petter Bøckman (talk) 08:46, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

African Wild Dog

On a related matter, please see this thread/problem: Talk:Canid_hybrid#African_wild_dog. Chrisrus (talk) 15:38, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Dingoes: feral domestic dogs gone wild?

Please, expert needed to explain MSW3's statements on the taxon Canis lupus dingo page has only two words in the comments section, placed in brackets, here: http://www.bucknell.edu/MSW3/browse.asp?id=14000751. This is also true of their Canis lupus familiaris page. What does this mean? Please, any/every expert, what does this mean?

Of course, before you answer, you should read the exlanation that there seems to be on their Canis lupus page, here: http://www.bucknell.edu/MSW3/browse.asp?id=14000738. It says many things about the taxonomic questions about this species, but it says this about this matter:

(Canis lupus) includes the domestic dog as a subspecies, with the dingo provisionally separate--artificial variants created by domestication and selective breeding (Vilá et al., 1999; Wayne and Ostrander, 1999; Savolainen et al., 2002). Although this may stretch the subspecies concept, it retains the correct allocation of synonyms. Corbet and Hill (1992) suggested treating the domestic dog as a separate species in SE Asia. Synonyms allocated according to Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951), Mech (1974), and Hall (1981).

Maybe you should also have a look at the article Canis lupus dingo, which is not the same as the Australian Dingo article, and not overequate the Australian native dog with all the dogs covered by the taxon Canis lupus dingo.

Thank you for your kind attention to this matter. Chrisrus (talk) 04:43, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Image copyright

I tend to keep away from copyrighted images due to the bureaucracy, but there is a phylum of bacteria, typified by the genus Thermotoga, with a bizarre shape that deserves a picture. The paper that describes it is this, if I were to copy figure 6 and upload it, what special circumstance should I claim? --Squidonius (talk) 22:00, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's eligible for Fair Use though. Maybe you can try contacting a microbiologist? I found one with pictures of T. maritima and an email.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 04:01, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Another idea: if it's just the general shape, you could draw one yourself. Not ideal, but sometimes the only way of getting round copyright. On the other hand, I think that you could try "fair use" with a rationale along the lines of File:Psilophyton_Forbesii_Reconstruction.gif, e.g. "morphology of the bacterium is important to the article; very difficult to correctly reproduce it other than by copying an image". Peter coxhead (talk) 12:22, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the alternative suggestions. TEM image of that quality are published: I think the image on the site linked is in fact from another paper (possibly also by Carl Woese), so that would be of no use. Following Peter Coxhead's idea of simply sketching it, I did so: Thermotoga. I though it best to put a note in the caption, requesting a better picture, which is probably both futile and against some WP:acronym of some kind, but trying does not harm. --Squidonius (talk) 03:10, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the note violates Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Instructional_and_presumptuous_language because it addresses the reader directly; it should really be on the talk page. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:23, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Declared extinct but still exists vs. declared extinct and no live specimens found since

We need to distinguish between "Extinct" and "Declared extinct but proven to exist after being declared extinct" in Template:Taxobox.

I recommend making the

extinct =

field visible in the template and adding a new parameter

possibly_rediscovered =

that is also visible in the template.

I also recommend changing the word "extinct" that is above "EX" in articles like Israel painted frog to "declared extinct."

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:17, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

We're using IUCN statuses (as well as some other systems), and the IUCN status is "Extinct", not something else, so I'd prefer to keep that. We shouldn't be in the business of making our own statuses. Ucucha (talk) 03:48, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree. If a later reliable source shows that a taxon is not in fact extinct so that the IUCN status is incorrect, that status can be removed from the taxobox and the issue discussed, appropriately sourced, in the text. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:59, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

This sounds like a good solution for now. I've made the relevant change to Israel painted frog which has been recently re-discovered. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:33, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Taxonomy article

Members of this project may want to comment at Talk:Taxonomy#Growing_disaster as this appears to be a very important article in terms of ToL issues. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:32, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Taxonomy vs Classification vs Systematics vs.....

Dear all, since I've been writing biology articles, I and many (other editors) have had a section (generally first or second after the lead) which combines discussion of common names, scientific names, classification, subspecies, and sometimes hybridisation and evolution. To me combining these in one section is often prudent as (a) they are often all quite intertwined, especially with more cladistics around, and (b) splitting into separate subsections often results in very small sections. I'll sometimes split off etymology as a subsection if a word has a lengthy evolution which is notable and germane to the article.

Now to date, I've used the section title taxonomy (sometimes with and naming or and evolution) but this is not particularly accessible to lay readers I suspect. Anyway, I am not fussed which word we do use, but in the interests of conformity I reckon we should all use the same word if we can. So time to vote then as there are alot of us....personally I could go with any of the three, but just think we should all use the same heading if we can. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:35, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

PS: If someone can find the best biological definitions and add, that would be immensely helpful I think. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:39, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

One of the best discussions on this subject remains the one by Ernst Mayr in "The Growth of Biological Thought" (1982):

"The terms "taxonomy" and "systematics" were generally considered as synonymous during the first half of this century. If asked what the tasks of systematics are, the taxonomist would have answered, "To describe the diversity of nature (meaning: to describe the species of which diversity exists) and to classify it." And yet as far back as the days of Leeuwenhoek and Swammerdam in the seventeenth century it has become evident that the study of organic diversity comprised more than the description and classification of species. Already then (and as a matter of fact as far back as Aristotle) it was apparent that the study of diversity included the analysis of stages of the life cycle and of sexual dimorphism. When living animals were studied in nature, it was also found that different species occurred in different habitats, preferred different foods, and had different behaviors. But it was not until the middle of this century that the great importance of the study of diversity was fully realized, in the wake of the new systematics and the evolutionary synthesis. It then became apparent that the traditional definition of the definition of systematics was far too limited.

As a consequence Simpson (1961) made a clear terminological distinction between taxonomy and systematics. He retained the term "taxonomy" in its traditional meaning, but gave to "systematics" a much broader scope, defining it as "the scientific study of the kinds and diversity of organisms, and of any and all relationships among them." Systematics thus was conceived as the science of diversity and this new broadened concept of systematics has been widely adopted." Ernst Mayr

Alternatively, I've listed a few of the better more recent definitions from botanical texts below (but the addition of more would be great, especially from animal/fungal works).

BC Myles (talk) 12:06, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Here's the definitions from the "Fungal Bible" (Dictionary of the Fungi, 10th edition, 2008) (all are just the first sentence or two from larger entries):

• Classification: "The assigning of objects to defined categories; taxonomy. The application of scientific names to the categories into which the fungi may be placed and the relative order of those categories is governed by an internationally agreed code (see Nomenclature)."
• Nomenclature: "The allocation of scientific names to units which a systematist considers merit formal recognition."
• Systematics: "Also Biosystematics (q.v.) The study of the relationships and classification of organisms and the processes by which they have evolved and are maintained (includes the subdisciplines of nomenclature and taxonomy)".
• Taxonomy: The science of classification, in biology the arrangement of organisms into a classification". Sasata (talk) 21:53, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Classification

Possibly most accessible name. If supporting this option, indicate whether need to add and naming in title.

Support

1. Classification IMO isd the "most accessible name" for general readers. --Philcha (talk) 21:34, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
2. Support, but only as a guideline. This is the accessible name, and I think it implies phylogenetics and nomenclature just fine. However, I agree with Sabine's Sunbird below, that there should be no concrete rule around headings. —Pengo 01:03, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
3. Support if we have all major subcategories. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Does not include phylogenetics and nomenclature, which are frequently discussed in these sections.-- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 13:04, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
2. Yeah, I am thinking this is too narrow. Its only benefit is ease of understanding, but systematics is pretty self explanatory as well. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:17, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
3. Far too narrow, pretty clear from the discussions here that using exclusively either "taxonomy" or "systematics" would be better in terms of what these sections cover. —innotata 15:19, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
4. Too narrow, and perhaps most importantly: Often used in other fields beside biology. Petter Bøckman (talk) 20:27, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

In general, I would suggest we use the 3 terms as defined:

1. taxonomy, chopping up the perceived tree of life into parts (taxa)
2. nomenclature, assigning names to the taxa
3. systematics, arranging them in space/time back to get closer to resolving the "true" tree of life.

whenever we have only 1 or 2 done. Articles usually grow by bits and pieces.

As soon as we have all 3 together (nomenclature would likely often be the last to be written, but may just as well be first), we use "Classification" instead. Then, use the above 3 as subsections of "Classification" as needed. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:49, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Tried it out. Looks weird. Might be it's unusual, I don't think it will still look weird in one year if we adopt it more commonly. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:41, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Taxonomy

Less accessible name, but used to date in most bio articles with headers.

• Definition 1: Judd et al., 2007 (Plant Systematics - A Phylogenetic Approach textbook) - Theory and practice of grouping individuals into species, arranging species into larger groups, and giving those groups names, thus producing a classification.
• Definition 2: Simpson, 2010 (Plant Systematics textbook) - A field of science (and major component of systematics) that encompasses description, identification, nomenclature, and classification.

Support

1. The section aims to answer the questions "What is it called? and why? What is it related to?". The normal word for this is "taxonomy". "Classification" is just about what it is related to, not what it is called. And "systematics" will mean nothing to most general readers. Maproom (talk) 14:59, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Does not include phylogenetics and nomenclature, which are frequently discussed in these sections.-- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 13:04, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Eh? Taxonomy does not include nomenclature? Surely you don't mean that! Peter coxhead (talk) 13:49, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Taxonomy sensu strictu does not include nomenclature; it is simply the "philosophical" circumscribing of nested sets from a bunch of individual organisms in space/time. Taxonomy sensu lato, as the practical work of biological classification, includes nomenclature. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:44, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Systematics

If taken broadly, the most accurate (?) - again if supporting, should we add and naming in title.

• Definition 1: Judd et al., 2007 (Plant Systematics - A Phylogenetic Approach textbook) - The science of organismal diversity; frequently used in a sense roughly equivalent to taxonomy.
• Definition 2: Simpson, 2010 (Plant Systematics textbook) - A science that includes and emcompasses traditional taxonomy and that has as its primary goal the reconstruction of phylogeny.

Support

1. This is a non issue. Systematics includes all aspects, and what we need is a broad header. For example, many taxonomy headers also contain substantial phylogenetics discussions, which is neither taxonomy nor classification. Systematics already includes naming and nomenclature. So, easy catch all term that covers what we actually put in the sections. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 13:03, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
2. Okay, you've won me. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:15, 27 November 2011 (UTC)bc
3. Excellent. Great to see this getting support. I don't think there's any doubt that it's the most accurate heading for the type of content that goes in this section-- the issue is if the lay reader will understand it. I would think it's at least as familiar to people as "taxonomy", and as it gets used more here it will only become more familiar. Some level of biological literacy needs to be expected of readers looking at biological articles, and I would say the average reader would be more than capable of quickly working it out. Perhaps some effort should be directed towards the Systematics page though. Also, I think adding "and naming" to the title would be redundant. BC Myles (talk)
4. I will support this one, its what I have been doing on the turtle pages I created as its a more accurate title. Please note though that despite Simpsons view, taxonomy is not really part of systematics. These are separate sciences. A look at journal papers studying the genomes of species should show this. Geneticists are usually not taxonomists, and hence they rarely describe new species in their main papers. Systematics is about identifying the relationships of organisms, ie tree building. Taxonomy is about description, identification, classification and naming. Cheers, Faendalimas ^talk 16:23, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

   So, the Society for Systematic Biology should be renamed? See http://systbio.org/?q=node/204 -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 02:10, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

5. I'm for it. Petter Bøckman (talk) 21:57, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

Arguably, "Systematics" does not cover some of the more obscure aspects of nomenclature, such as pre-Linnean terms and folk names. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:49, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Other ideas

Add other proposals below. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:35, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

The section heading will depend on the contents, and will vary quite widely between taxa (at least for some groups of organisms). Some taxa need a lot of discussion of nomenclature, while others were named once and nothing has changed since. Some taxa need a lot of discussion of taxonomic placement, while others need very little. For some taxa, there is a lot of phylogenetic background to be given, and other times there isn't. The section heading should fit the contents, and should be allowed to fit them. Likewise, editors should not be forced to adopt particular structures where that isn't appropriate. If the nomenclature is best dealt with in a section on subspecies, say (I can't see why it would be, but this is merely for the sake of argument), then that should be allowed. I don't think any one name will be sufficiently generally applicable to be given special status here as our preferred section heading. A section chiefly about nomenclature (with some material on phylogenetics) should be called "Nomenclature"; a section chiefly on phylogenetics (with some material on taxonomic circumscription) should be called "Phylogenetics"; and so on. Standardising headings is an issue for featured topics, but not for the whole Tree of Life project. --Stemonitis (talk) 13:45, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:56, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree there will be some variance, but all species will have discussion on what genus (or family) they're in, why they are named and subspecies if there are any, and systematics covers this. Stemonitis can you see any reason why we'd use taxonomy any more then? Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:16, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Taxonomy fits when there's discussion of taxonomic circumscription (and nomenclature if included), but no description of evolution or ecology (parts "e" and "f" of the definition at systematics). This happens to be how I tend to write, and "Taxonomy" tends to be the heading I use, although I accept it's not ideal for the lay reader. (I'm not sure "Systematics" is any better in that regard.) --Stemonitis (talk) 14:56, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

You're quite right that forcing authors to use a title that doesn't best fit what they're written would be undesirable-- but I'm not sure that's what's happening here. At the moment hundreds (thousands?) of taxon articles use the "catch-all" title "Taxonomy" for a variety of phylogenetic/classification/nomenclatural information. For an example see the Asteraceae page, which has a phylogenetic tree in the "Taxonomy" section. This is not correct use of the heading "Taxonomy", as this discipline does not include investigating relationships. This vote is meant to bring attention to this trend on Wikipedia, and potentially offer a solution by encouraging the use of "Systematics" (or whatever is decided upon) instead. If there was lots of information available, "Systematics", being the broad discipline that it is, could easily accommodate multiple sub-headings (like "Nomenclature" and "Phylogenetics" that you've listed above). This would be left up to the author. In the end I think encouraging the use of a more accurate header solves more issues than it creates. BC Myles (talk) 14:24, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I have lent my support above to systematics, however, I do have a concern. The trend of trying to force, actively encourage, whatever you want to call it, editors into set titles, headers etc, is not a good thing. Someone mentioned that a basic understanding of biology should be expected of readers looking at these articles. Well conversely I think the same can be said of editors. I think our editors should have not only the option but the capacity to utilise those titles that best fit. If I am writing out a complicated nomenclatural issue I want to place that under the taxonomy, or nomenclature title, not be forced to call this systematics which it is not. Having seen how these proposals go, once in place, mindless editors who are probably after edit counts do go through these pages changing things to be inline with their concept of WP: whatever policy.. wether it really applies or fits or not. Remember in biology there is one rule, there is always an exception to any rule. Yes thats a little tongue in cheek but its the point I am after here. Cheers, Faendalimas ^talk 16:23, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm with Faendalimas on this one. First of all, I dispute the contention that the term "taxonomy" is less accessible than "systematics"; in my own personal experience (yes, I know, anecdotal evidence is weak argumentative evidence) I learned what taxonomy was in grade 10 science (Canada), and hadn't heard of "systematics" until I started hanging around here. I'm perfectly fine with naming these sections as "Taxonomy", or "Taxonomy and classification", or "Taxonomy and phylogeny", or even "Systematics", etc. as the subject material in the section dictates. If there's a problem with some current articles that have these sections named inappropriately (because they cover material broader than traditionally covered by the term taxonomy), then these can be resolved on a case-by-case basis with a suggestion for section renaming on article talk. Sasata (talk) 19:07, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Are you serious? The word "system" is commonly used in English, "taxon" is not. Even as a lad I knew what "systematics" was, I don't even think I heard the world "Taxonomy" until my 2nd year in biology at the university. Granted, I am not a native English speaker, but that is true for a lot our readers too. Petter Bøckman (talk) 20:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Maybe, but knowing "system" does not explain "systematics". It could just as well be systems biology or systemics, for instance. The word "taxon" is not well known, but I think "taxonomy" is surprisingly widespread. --Stemonitis (talk) 20:40, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

'Systematics' sounds like it could be the title of a Janet Jackson song..... ;) PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 20:44, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

• Strong oppose any binding rule for whole project. I'm still pissed off that we have enforced non-bolding of scientific names. Enough with the rule creep already. Sabine's Sunbird talk 19:09, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't call it "rule creep" really, as it's not that a "rule" (suggestion) is trying to be newly created here. This all started because at the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Plants/Template page, the current suggestion is to have the heading "Taxonomy", and then include evolutionary history information within that-- which is incorrect. Your issue seems to be more with having templates at all, and that's perhaps a different thread. Although keep in mind that having a free and open article structure to every taxon page sounds great, the end result is that there's little consistency between pages. For the reader that occasionally looks at one page and moves on this has no effect at all. For readers that regularly use Wikipedia to learn about taxa, this could get frustrating, as with every different page they'd encounter a new structure. BC Myles (talk) 00:35, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

• Do we really impose that? Un-bolding the scientific name (which redirects there after all) is just ridiculous. We should overturn any such recommendation. I put scientific names (where the title is a common name) in boldface, and I would resist any attempts to change that. I thought it odd when looking at the bird articles; now monotypic genera (sorry to bring it up again) have the genus name in boldface, but not the binomen. That can't be right. If you wanted to pursue this (in a separate thread), I would support you all the way. --Stemonitis (talk) 19:23, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. As per my MOS:BOLD rule-of-thumb below, it is a main redirect, if not THE redirect - it should be bolded of course! Even unrelated articles like 57 mm anti-tank gun M1943 (ZiS-2) bold the equivalent terms throughout at their first appearance. It is in line with the general boldface MoS.Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:54, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Writing as someone who's a bit of an outsider (i.e. as someone who's never been academically involved in any of the biological sciences), I'm inclined to favour the approach of editors simply being more circumspect about what they write about under different headings, and using only those headings which are most apposite to what they are writing about. This would not only be inherently more accurate, but would also minimise confusion for readers (like myself) who are not already intimately acquainted with all the different terms. Having any kind of 'catch-all' term, whatever it is, is surely putting neatness of presentation ahead of truth. If editors write about something of purely taxonomic delineation under the heading 'systematics', or conversely something about systematic relationships under a heading 'taxonomy', this is actually a kind of misinformation, and not furthering the cause of wider education. I appreciate that there is (a great deal of) overlap between the subjects covered by the different headings, but surely this is reason to be very careful about making differences clear, rather than fudging them together? I have looked at the articles (and sections) on systematics, phylogenetics and biological taxonomy, and their presentation to the layperson is rather dense and (in terms of precisely how they delineate from each other) unclear. If as a result, an educated person such as myself is inclined to feel, "I can't be bothered", I wonder who exactly these articles are aimed at - people who are already familiar with their content? I think that having catch-all headings - of any description - might be a similar scenario. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 19:55, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Same here. I also prefer it be kept to the discretion of the editor. With a Systematics heading, we are now obligated to include possibly very long cladograms and whatnot in what used to be the Taxonomy section (which is usually high up on the article). This can clutter the layout a bit and the reader will first encounter confusing cladograms before the reader can even read other sections. That is actually one of the reasons why I separate Taxonomy from Phylogeny - Taxonomy is at least reasonably understandable, and is required for other more laymen-oriented sections. Phylogeny is highly specialized and pushing it early to the reader can lose his interest. P.S. I still bold scientific names as in my understanding, it was only for certain layouts of the lead ("Common name (Scientific name) is..." rather than the "Scientific name, commonly known as Common name, is..." that I usually prefer. :P -- Obsidi♠n Soul 23:03, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Systematics includes taxonomy. Have a look at the definitions above and the quote from Ernst Mayr. Just because you don't discuss every possible subfield of systematics under that heading does not mean that you can't still call it systematics. In no way would you now be obligated to show phylogenetic trees. I can also think of no situation where having systematic information coming before descriptive information would be desirable. BC Myles (talk) 00:45, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Exactly the point. Since it includes both phylogeny and taxonomy, you now have to discuss phylogeny (including cladograms) under the same heading. Unless... you propose to have a section called Systematics and a separate one called Phylogeny or you remove Phylogeny altogether. Taxonomy is usually the second (or first) section in an article on taxa. This is necessary because in some articles the Description also discusses relationships with other organisms, e.g. "Like all members of the family, X has this and that.", or "Unlike other genera of the family, X lacks this and that". If you haven't described its taxonomic relationships yet (in the Taxonomy section), it would be jarring and wouldn't make sense.

And by having cladograms that early, you needlessly complicate the article for a layman reader who's probably not interested in it at all. I put cladograms at the end of the articles for this reason.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 01:36, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

These really are not the same thing. Systematics is not inclusive of taxonomy but dependant on it. Mayr's comments from the 1980's stemmed from a series of essays he did. His "synthesis of diverse disciplines" he was trying to bring systematics and taxonomy back together. Concurrent suggestions by geneticists that all morphological and statistical data be relegated to being placed on a genetic tree kind of destroyed this option. The paleo's who have no genetic data and need living species to have valid morphological data were unimpressed by this. So the reality is that systematics relies on taxonomy as do most biological sciences.

Further to other points here, it is sensible of course to cover description first which is pretty much taxonomy, then an article may go into other areas, eg ecology, distribution etc, then come back to systematics for looking at relationships. Do you really want to have the Systematics header appear twice in an article? Also it has been hinted at here that these be adopted by everyone, that means policy and that means loss of freedom of choice by the editor. I don't think that any suggestion has been made that because you use the term systematics you must include its phylogeny. But I do not want to see the phylogeny put to the front of the article, too much detail too quick for many readers. I definitely oppose any increases to policy, which I will also call "rule-creep" as we have enough of them already. Cheers, Faendalimas ^talk 02:15, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

• Impossible to decide as the terms involved do not have sufficiently clear definitions and usages. Both the discussion above and the articles which cover various aspects of Systematics, Taxonomy, Classification and Nomenclature all make it quite clear that there simply aren't sharp consensus definitions of these terms which we can all agree on. Without them, we are often just arguing at cross-purposes. For example, the Judd (2007) definition of Systematics ("The science of organismal diversity; frequently used in a sense roughly equivalent to taxonomy") is used above to support Systematics as a title, but could equally be read the other way round (i.e. that Taxonomy is roughly equivalent to Systematics) to support Taxonomy. The correct advice is surely that given by User:Stemonitis: the section heading should fit the content. I suspect that "Taxonomy" is being used too often, and other headings would often be better, but there's no one-size-fits-all replacement. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:07, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

• Lets close this then as the discussion seems to me to be at a stalemate on this issue. I think Peter Coxhead has made a good point here. The title taxonomy is probably overused. That can be fixed with careful discussion on a case by case basis. I think the discussion here has been good and useful but we are not going to make a decision here. There are too many variable definitions and to much variability in the species articles to put such restrictions as hinted at above in place. Therefore I propose that any thought of a recommendation on headers here be set aside and we close this discussion. If anything comes of this we editors need to be diligent on the usage of these terms and that the relevant pages on taxonomy, sytematics etc be made clear on what these terms mean so that editors can make good decisions on the header of these sections in species articles. Cheers, Faendalimas ^talk 14:37, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

• Aren't taxonomy and systematics nearly equivalent? This would be as conventionally defined, not as defined by Simpson and Mayr intentionally to make a distinction; and even according to Judd, as Peter Coxhead points out, systematics after Simpson and Mayr is "frequently used in a sense roughly equivalent to taxonomy". Though systematics appears to be more appropriate for what field of knowledge is discussed under "taxonomy" sections, isn't "taxonomy" more accessible? (I don't know how we would find which one is more accessible, but like Sasata, I would expect "taxonomy" is from personal experience.) I don't think this makes "systematics" improper for section headings, but isn't part of the distinction between "systematics" and "taxonomy" that "systematics" is more the field of inquiry than what is known about relations and the resulting classification? Lastly, I don't see the benefit of making a blanket suggestion or rule, and as much as a problem exists in article headings, it may be better to solve case by case. —innotata 16:15, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

No they are not, taxonomy is about identification and classification. Systematics is about relationships. That is the conventional definitions. As for accessability, if you mean by this who would know what they mean without having to look them up, I think most probably hear of taxonomy first but systematics soon follows. Both words appear in dictionaries with their biological meanings. Scientists who work in the field tend to call themselves taxonomists, not systematists (I refer to myself as a taxonomist/palaeontologist to my peers) so I think they are relatively equal, maybe slightly favoring taxonomy. That one is also considered a career path probably gives it more familiarity. In descriptions of new species there will usually be 2 sections separately called taxonomy and systematics, or a header listing both. Cheer, Faendalimas ^talk 17:21, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The impression that I've had, and that the definitions mentioned in this discussion give, is that the terms are used variously, and are definitely not clearly two separate matters. I'm still not convinced there is a problem with "taxonomy", or of any name for the sections in question though. Does "systematics" cover subjects that "taxonomy" does not enough to matter? —innotata 17:48, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The above discussions remind me of physical geography lectures I attended in the 1980s, and reinforces in my mind the feeling which prompted a comment I made at the WikiProject Plants talk page, concerning this aspect of botany being in a state of flux and possibly undergoing a slow paradigm shift (away from pure classification and instead more towards evolution/phylogenetics/cladistics etc.)(well, this is the impression I have gained from Wikipedia pages and discussions - please correct me if I'm wrong!). Often academic disciplines move forward from one general set of beliefs and priorities to another, not solely as a result of inevitable general momentum in a certain direction, but because a few individuals are active proponents and push their own view (rightly or wrongly). Faendalimas' mention of Mayr trying to bring systematics and taxonomy back together seems (on the face of it) typical of this kind of behaviour (on the part of Mayr). The evolution of academic disciplines cannot be divorced from the personalities involved - it is wise to remember this. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 18:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure. But as a heavy reader of these articles, I prefer whichever option encourages less talk about what something should be called and more about how it attaches to the tree of life; i.e.: claddistics explained in terms of branches on a family tree. Chrisrus (talk) 21:45, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Great discussion. A few things have become clear. (1) My purpose for attempting to standardize with "systematics" because I was becoming frustrated with so many taxa pages containing such obviously different structures. As a systematist, I like order. Wikipedia holds a lot of power for informing people about biodiversity, because its so visible. But, as I've learned, this is an open encyclopedia and turning the ToL related pages into a cohesive and standardized whole is not really feasible (and probably not even desirable from the opinions here). (2) It's not that the terms "Taxonomy" and "Systematics" don't have sharp definitions. Taxonomy does. All the taxonomic definitions mainly say the same thing. Nowhere will you find one that says it includes investigating evolutionary history (phylogeny). I've rewritten the page Taxonomy to that effect (though it still needs more work as I didn't have a lot of time-- feel free to contribute/correct anything I've missed/messed up). Taxonomy as sharply defined field, is fine. (3) The issue is with the newer term "systematics". It's been said a few times that taxonomy and systematics each have clearly defined differences, and one is about identification and classification, the other about relationships. There have been no definitions supporting this, but I see where it comes from. A few others (including me), have said that "systematics" includes "taxonomy" (based on the definitions, Ernst Mayr, etc.). But realistically, both views are wrong (and right). The term "systematics" is a gray area. Some of literature uses it as its own field distinct from taxonomy (if you search "taxonomy and systematics" on Web of Science or Google Scholar quite a few hits come up-- so clearly some authors see them as separate), and some of the literature treats systematics as if it includes taxonomy (shown in the definitions, and the content of "systematics" sections in many journal articles). This makes the term more versatile, because it has essentially two correct definitions, but also a bit "messy" if you like. Still, this resolves the issue for me.

I'm totally fine with the issue being closed, and authors selecting whatever headers, order, content, etc. they chose for every page. Readers are smart and will sort it out. BC Myles (talk) 08:02, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

"Nowhere will you find [a definition of taxonomy] that says it includes investigating evolutionary history"

• This may be true if you concentrate on the word "investigating"; those who construct cladograms based on molecular evidence don't generally regard themselves as doing taxonomy. But the reverse is clearly not true: those who do taxonomy have to study, describe and/or summarize research on evolutionary history; consider all the papers which have been produced by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, whose concern is with both the phylogeny and the classification (at the level of orders and families) of the angiosperms. Hence one part of explaining the taxonomy of a group in a Wikipedia article is often explaining the research on its phylogeny.
• This statement also seems not to express a NPOV regarding phylogenetic nomenclature and the PhyloCode, which is "designed to name clades by explicit reference to phylogeny" (Cantino et al. 2007). I hold no brief for the PhyloCode per se but the view that taxa should be monophyletic is now mainstream. It's impossible to explain the modern classification of Hominoidea, for example, without explaining the current view of their phylogeny.

My point is – at the risk of being repetitiously boring – that all these topics are fuzzily related to one another. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:46, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

"Hence one part of explaining the taxonomy of a group in a Wikipedia article is often explaining the research on its phylogeny."

Exactly. And once you do that you are now discussing Systematics. Calling a section that includes both taxonomic and phylogenetic content Taxonomy is incorrect. The APG name their text book "Plant Systematics - A Phylogenetic Approach", and not "Plant Taxonomy...". This is why I suggested changing the name of the "recommended" header from taxonomy to systematics in the first place, to be more accurate given how much reliance classification now has on phylogenetics (or even a header like "Taxonomy and systematics" apparently would be accurate, although it still looks a bit odd to me). As you mentioned, it is often difficult these days to strictly talk about "taxonomy" without discussing relationships (unless, for example, we're discussing a manuscript on a newly discovered species, placed in a classification purely on morphological grounds), and so we see the term systematics being used more often. But regardless, if you'd prefer to continue placing phylogenetic content within a Taxonomy section, more power to you. I think realistically, being totally accurate with respect to what goes under a header on a website like Wikipedia is not necessary. The main objective is that the contained information gets across.

Re the PhyloCode, as they've said many times, this is a code of nomenclature and not taxonomy as a whole. So I don't know that your NPOV point is relevant. As the PhyloCode is still unimplemented (currently on version 4c), I don't think we need to worry about revisiting all the textbook definitions to make sure they fall in line just yet. If it starts to be widely followed, then we'll do that. BC Myles (talk) 06:09, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Faendalimas on not forcing the issue. We might just agree on guidelines, like using an overarching term like "Classification" or "systematics" whenever such a section is fairly comprehensive, and turn to "taxonomy", "nomenclature" etc when the article still contains just that.

"Systematics" is OK by me but not ideal as an overall term. Strictly speaking, systematics is not concerned with drawing boundaries, but with arranging puzzle pieces into a tree shape. How and where they connect is not its main concern. (In a nutshell: "taxonomy was revolutionized by Linnaeus, systematics by Darwin; each would technically have been possible without the other".) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:55, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Re-invention?

I have just discovered this discussion. I started a proposal for seriously and systematically constructing a structure of articles on such topics. It seems to me that by relying on such a structure for cross-reference, we could short-circuit such problems. Anyone with comments for the discussion page of Taxonomy would be welcome, I am sure. JonRichfield (talk) 18:36, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I suggest the sections be called "Taxonomy and Relationships" and they be called upon to clarify not only what things are called per se exactly but more importantly how they fit onto the Tree of Life. This is the best way to serve the reader, I think. Chrisrus (talk) 19:37, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I feel each article should be handled as a separate case and the term (or terms) that seems most applicable to that article's section should be used. If there's a disagreement about it, carry on at that article's talk page. No consensus is needed for literary style. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:47, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

That's certainly a possibility, but in that case there ought to be some guidance provided as to which header is most appropriate for certain kinds of content. That is, if the article is entirely about the history of nomenclature and circumscription, prefer section title X, but if the focus is on a cladogram and molecular analysis of relationships, prefer section title Y. Right now, there are situations where the header in use is a mismatch for the included content. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:09, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

This seems to me the most sensible outcome from this discussion. There's clearly no consensus for rigidly fixed section titles, but there are some commonly used titles which editors have tried to use, not always appropriately. However, this leave the "who's going to bell the cat?" question: who is going to provide this guidance? Peter coxhead (talk) 21:50, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's really true that someone has to provide guidance. If you're writing only about taxonomy, call it Taxonomy; if it's about systematics, call it Systematics; if it's about evolution, call it Evolution. I don't think we need explicit guidance for such common-sense decisions. The heading should reflect the title, and I'm sure that's already stated in the guidelines (unless it's so obvious that no-one has mentioned it yet). --Stemonitis (talk) 23:23, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

While you would think that would be the case, but it hasn't been. This is why the whole issue arose in the first place. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:31, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Precisely. "Taxonomy", for example, is regularly used for content which is quite wide in scope, where perhaps "Systematics" would be more appropriate. I think it would be useful to add some guidance to the template page. Peter coxhead (talk) 00:22, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

WP Tree of Life in the Signpost

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Tree of Life for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. -Mabeenot (talk) 03:18, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Authority control

Since this was new to me, I'm spreading the word. If you edit biographical pages on taxonomic authors, there is now a standard template that tracks national and international library data for that author. This idea was developed on the German Wikipedia and is now being implemented here. It makes an excellent way for worldwide users to find our articles.

See Wikipedia:Authority control for a full description, and see Gregor Mendel for an example of implementation. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:50, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Meh. Of the author biographies I've written, one has no entries whatsoever, another only has records for the National Library of Australia which is not supported by the template. :( -- Obsidi♠n Soul 18:39, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

For the English Wikipedia, we'd probably want to support interaction with the National Library of Australia. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:57, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Domestic cat

The article Cat presently suggests that the valid scientific name is Felis catus, per Linnaeus, but cited sources, including very recent ones, seem to prefer Felis silvestris catus. I'd appreciate some guidance from people who think about this sort of thing more than I do. I am getting the impression that F. s. catus has been absolutely proven to be genetically accurate, and that there is no basis for elevation of domestic cats to species level at F. catus, but that some prefer that name simply on the basis of tradition. If this change should be made, how should the taxobox appear? I know it's very particular how to cite binomials, and even putting a name in parentheses can get all political. Basically, the article needs some taxonomy expert input, as this and all other domestic cat-related articles are edited almost exclusively by cat fanciers not zoologists. If this should be raised at WT:WikiProject Biology or somewhere more specific, please let me know. I have specifically not "advertised" this discussion at WT:WikiProject Cats or Talk:Cat because I'm looking for taxonomic input not a flamewar. If and when it comes time to change the article in major ways, I'm sure discussion at Talk:Cat will be interesting. Especially if I also propose moving the article to Domestic cat, a less ambiguous name. (Then again, is there an "official common name"? The article should be at that, probably, even if it is the ambiguous, plain "cat"). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:01, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

We normally go by this: http://www.bucknell.edu/msw3/browse.asp?s=y&id=14000029, which says "Felis Catus", at least for the taxobox. Chrisrus (talk) 18:33, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Wilson and Reeder's Mammal Species of the World includes an explanation in the pages for both Felis catus and Felis silvestris. Basically, the opinion is split, but historically (which really doesn't matter that much) the usage has been Felis catus. This is also mentioned in the taxonomy section in the Cat article. IMO, both should be mentioned (and bolded) in the lead section as subjective synonyms. The taxobox is probably fine as is though. Better to leave that uncluttered.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 18:45, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I thought there was some new consensus that we no longer boldface the binomial if the article's title is, and the lead begins with, the common name. If that's the case, any style guidelines about this sort of thing should be updated. I saw that about an hour ago, but I've been reading nomenclatural archived discussions all day, so I have no idea where I saw it. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 00:54, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

This is one of those things that slowly changes from considering them species despite not being good species to considering them subspecies theya re. This is happening with the Horse, the Dog and many other domesticated subspecies. So, I say use the subspecies name. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 19:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

You may wish to consider {{Infobox cat breed}}, too. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:36, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I was. :-) I think the rough consensus is to stick with Felis catus for now in the infoboxes, with the expectation that it's likely to be Felis silvestris catus in 5 or 10 years, and mention both in the lead of the main Cat article. I'm tempted to mention both in the infobox on that page, but not of course on the breed pages. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 21:43, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

If Felis silvestris (published 1777) and Felis catus (published 1758) are considered synonyms, then the species must be called Felis catus, by the Principle of Priority. Thus, "Felis silvestris catus" is a mistake, as far as I understand the situation; as subspecies, the two taxa would be Felis catus catus (domestic) and Felis catus silvestris (wild). Where the wild and domestic forms are considered different, the domestic form is Felis catus; see Anthea Gentry, Juliet Clutton-Brock & Colin P. Groves (2004). "The naming of wild animal species and their domestic derivatives". Journal of Archaeological Science. 31 (5): 645–651. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2003.10.006. --Stemonitis (talk) 21:58, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

That's not true in this case, because of ICZN Opinion 2027 (which, remarkably, we have an article about). Ucucha (talk) 22:20, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Right, that's why the literature that already refers to them by the subspecific synonym does so as F. s. catus. That really wasn't at issue here. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 23:04, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of that opinion. Interesting... --Stemonitis (talk) 07:25, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

So what about the common name? The not terribly exhaustive reading I've done so far is entirely in favor of "domestic cat". "Cat" seems to be a general word for "felid", when context doesn't make it clear that the domestic cat is intended ("I'm a veterinarian specializing in cats" implies domestic unless one works at the zoo. "I'm a zoologist specializing in cats" implies the broader meaning). The gist is, I think that Cat needs to move to Domestic cat, with Cat becoming a disambiguation page. The article text already says "domestic cat", and has for weeks now, because this is the common name according to the cited sources. Anyone else feel strongly either way, before I go to WP:RM? — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 23:04, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I checked the cat disambiguation page, and it seem ready for that if that's what we want to do, but it seems obvious to me that "c-a-t" searchers are highly likely to thinking of the "domestic cat", the ordinary regular familiar old normal kitty-cat, and then offered a hatnote link to the disambiguation page. Once they get there. Chrisrus (talk) 23:38, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

The domestic cat would clearly be the "primary topic" for WP:DAB purposes of "cat", but the problem is that this isn't the recognized common name, so it shouldn't be at cat to begin with. That is, the primary topic stuff of WP:DAB is triggered when the same page name is being vied for by multiple subjects, which I'm observing isn't really the case, because "cat" is just some ambiguous word, while "domestic cat" is the (so far as I can tell) universally recognized common name of F. catus in English. Because of the primary topic thing, an argument could be made that Cat should redirect to Domestic cat with a "Cat redirects here, for other uses see Cat (disambiguation)" hatnote, but whatever. It's more about whether WP:COMMONNAME should trump our general practice of putting organisms at article titles that consist of their scientifically recognized common names. If we actually think WP:COMMONNAME is more important (which would have impact on a lot of other biological articles' titles...), then WP:DAB's primary topic rule is triggered. If animal common names are an exception to WP:COMMONNAME, then the primary topic stuff is moot. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 00:54, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Taracus marchingtoni

Does anyone have knwoledge of Taracus marchingtoni, an arachnid, discussed in Talk:Oregon High Desert Grotto#Taracus marchingtoni? I'm trying to find a reliable citation. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:31, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Apparently Oregon Underground is electronic and privately circulated. I do not even know if that satisfies ICZN naming criteria for new species. You might try emailing the Oregon High Desert Grotto and request a copy of the specific issue cited.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 17:49, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

As I wrote on the article talkpage, I haven't been able to find a mention of the species either. However, the dead reference in the article is actually at the Internet Archive. The piece does mention (p. 12) that possibly new invertebrates have been found in the cave, but doesn't say anything about T. marchingtoni specifically. Ucucha (talk) 17:59, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you; I've removed it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:06, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

The Dog Branch of the Tree of Life Now Available for Free at the Click of a Mouse!!!!

I have something to announce that I am very excited about:

Below please find a link to a free .pdf file of a WP:RS paper I had annouced but hitherto had not found free access to. In it, the Dog branch of the tree of life has been mapped in great detail. But now I have found that this, for free, anyone can see it now:

http://www.eeb.ucla.edu/Faculty/Novembre/vonHoldtEtAl2010Nature.pdf

It's on page two. A map of the dog branch of the tree of life. It's really cool to see and seems to have ramafactions (no pun intended) for several articles. I hope post it here not only in the hope that you will enjoy looking at it, but I also in the hopes that you all, as I have, will think of all the uses to which it could be put for this project.

Chrisrus (talk) 03:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, the wolves cluster as a single group, as a sister group of dogs. I would like to know what populations they represent. Petter Bøckman (talk) 07:44, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Praying Mantis and the group it's in

Mantis#Systematics says, "The systematics of mantises have long been disputed. Mantises, along with walking sticks, were once placed in the order Orthoptera with the cockroaches (now Blattodea) and rock crawlers (now Grylloblattodea). Kristensen (1991) combined Mantodea with the cockroaches and termites into the order Dictyoptera." Dictyoptera and Blattodea are both still orders, it's just that mantises have moved from one order to the other order? Banaticus (talk) 08:52, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

This seems to be a classic example of the problems which arise when trying to reconcile traditional rank-based classifications with molecular phylogenetic trees. All the recent (post-2006 anyway) sources I can find agree that the groups Mantodea, Blattodea and Isoptera form a monophyletic group termed Dictyoptera. However these papers don't then go on to propose a formal classification. So it seems that you can either keep Mantodea, Blattodea and Isoptera as orders (as is done here – expand Neoptera) and have an informal higher clade Dictyoptera OR submerge all three into a new order Dictyoptera (as Kristensen did). But Dictyoptera and Blattodea shouldn't be orders in the same classification system, because Dictyoptera includes Blattodea. This doesn't seem to be very well explained at Mantis#Systematics. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:19, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Organism capitalization synch

FYI

 – Pointer to related discussion.

I'm working to make sure that WP:Manual of Style#Animals, plants, and other organisms, WP:Naming conventions (capitalization)#Organisms, WP:Naming conventions (fauna)#Capitalisation of common names of species WP:WikiProject Tree of Life#Article titles, WP:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Animals, plants, and other organisms, WP:Naming conventions (flora)#Scientific versus common names, etc., are synched with regard to common name capitalization.

Please centralize discussion at WT:Manual of Style#Organism capitalization synch

— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 07:59, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I had assumed that "synched" meant simply ensuring consistency while maintaining content. This is not what SMcCandlish means; his "synching" is intended to change the meaning of some of these pages. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:46, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

That's why synching means; when the sub-guidelines don't agree with main ones they have to change in order to be in synchrony with them, by definition. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 22:30, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Free database of zoological author abbreviations

Quick question. Does anyone know a good searchable free database for zoological author abbreviations? I'm trying to find out the identity of a 19th century author with the abbreviation Cànt. or Cant..-- Obsidi♠n Soul 11:03, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

List of authors of names published under the ICZN suffers from the lack of such a source.--Curtis Clark (talk) 03:24, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah! Theodore Edward Cantor. TYVM :) -- Obsidi♠n Soul 06:14, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Amphibian and reptile fun....

See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Amphibians_and_Reptiles#Article_naming_guidelines_redux. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:00, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

The Strange Case of the Pig

Pity the poor User who should happen to type the letters “p-i-g” in that box over there. Because it turns out that the answer to the question “What is a pig?” is not as cut-and-dried as you might think. It turns out, however, that, like most referents of terms which are not proper nouns, it turns out that there is a vague gray fuzzy area surrounding the concept of “Pig”. The navigation page Pig (disambiguation) lays it out best: a series of concentric circles orbiting the core: the referent of domestic pig, each based on a taxon:

• Domestic pig, Sus scrofa domestica or Sus domestica BULLSEYE
  • Wild Pig, or Eurasian Wild Boar, Sus scrofa, the species from which the domestic pig was bred
    • Sus, a genus within the pig family, including Sus scrofa and closely related southeast Asian species
      • Suinae, the pig subfamily, including Sus and other genera from Africa and southeast Asia
        • Suidae, the pig family, including Suinae and other extinct Old World subfamilies
          • Suina, a suborder of mammals including Suidae, and the Tayssuidae (peccaries or "New World pigs") ‘’Sus scrofa domstica’’ or ‘’Sus domestica’’ (by the way, note this precedent: TWO TAXA ALLOWED FOR CORE REFERENT: one stubspecies, one species)

First, before you find the answer, which would you send a “p-i-g” searcher? Now, where do we, where does Wikipedia send them? To the article pig. Why? Why Sus and not any of these other taxon-based articles?” Why not just domestic pig? That would seem to be the most obvious thing, but if we want the most inclusive, why not take a bigger bite? Chrisrus (talk) 03:46, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Sus. Greatest common denominator without being too vague. Includes all the most likely targets. Other suids do not get called "pig" other than members of the genus Sus. What would you prefer, and why?-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 05:15, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with Obsidian, Sus seesm the right place. As long as there is a few "for XXXX, see XXX" at th etop, we should be fine. Petter Bøckman (talk) 21:07, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

See #Domestic cat above – it's the extact same question, really. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 00:48, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

@Obsidian and Mr. Brockman: You are right. The general tendency in English is for species outide the Sus orbit to be called "hogs", not "pigs", so for the biggest bite of so-called "pigs" without drifting into "hog" orbits where Red river hogs, and giant forest hogs and so on reside, Sus seems to be a reasonable place to send "p-i-g" searchers. On the other hand, "Domestic pig" might be the most reasonably assumed intended referent of a likely "p-i-g" searcher.

Tangently, where should H-o-g" searchers be sent?

@SMcCandlish: Yes, it's quite the same, but also different because of how many possible targets we have for "C-A-T" searchers as opposed to "C-A-T" searchers. How many taxonomic orbits around the domestic cat are there? Should Cat (disambiguation) which only offers the two taxon-based choices, be expanded with more targets, as is done at Pig (disambiguation)#Animals?

I don't have a strong opinion either way, other than I think the article presently at Cat, on the domestic cat, sh ould be at Domestic cat. Whether cat should redir there or be a DAB page or go to Felidae, or what is kind of an open question. But basically all cats that don't have a special one-word name like leopard and jaguar are named "X cat" (Asian leopard cat, fishing cat, etc., etc., etc.) and are grouped into larger categorizatoin tlike the great cats, New Orld cats, etc. On average people are probably wanting house cats when they put in cat, just like they want farm pigs when they put in pig or hog, but in too many cases they really are looking for something more general. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 06:47, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Closest relatives of the Embryophyta

The articles Charales and Plant both give Charales as the closest relatives of the Embryophyta. However, according to recent phylogenetic analysis, the Zygnematales are "most likely" a closer group. Are these results worth incorporating? I also stumbled on an overview of recent insights in green plant phylogeny. This is all quite remote from my personal areas of expertise and interest, but I thought it might be useful to flag this here.  --Lambiam 10:00, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Another recent (2012) paper [4] (lots of base pairs, not very many taxa) giving similar, but not the same, conclusion. Lavateraguy (talk) 10:49, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

All the "deep" phylogeny stuff seems very uncertain and constantly changes when new papers come out. I recently edited the Chromalveolata article. Almost all the groups in the classification in the taxobox are disputed by one or other article. Many of the articles in this area, imho, are not sufficiently tentative and do not convey correctly the huge uncertainty which currently exists. What is clear is that phylogenetic trees derived from one set of genetic data repeatedly don't agree with trees from a different set of data, even though both meet all the statistical criteria. So the results are definitely worth incorporating, but with a degree of scepticism about all such information. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:25, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I've skimmed a few recent papers. It looks as if there has been more replacement, or loss and reacquistion, of plastids among chromalveolates than was at first thought. Gene transfer from lost plastids to the nucleus is a potentially confounding process for phylogenetic analysis. Lavateraguy (talk) 20:55, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

This is the reason Wikipedia primarily wants secondary sources (i.e. textbooks). It's not because they are necessarily right, but because they represent a fairly well agreed on systematic. It's quite al right to write that we don't really know and that the analysis are conflicting. The important part is that each groups has a reasonable description, for the foreseeable future we'll have to live with the phylogeny being in flux. Petter Bøckman (talk) 21:13, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

The problem with "deep phylogeny" is that there are no accurate secondary sources because the subject has been moving so quickly recently. It's arguable that Wikipedia shouldn't have had articles on a lot of this material, but it does, so we have to try to keep them reasonably error-free. However, I do think that some articles would be better merged into others; some "groups" appear to be artefacts of earlier analyses. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:41, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Transitional Fossil peer-review

• Wikipedia:Peer_review/Transitional_fossil/archive1
• Transitional fossil

It is a very important subject, and I wish to take it to GA/FA status in the future. Input from members of this wikiproject would be highly valued. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 00:47, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Protection for Ape

Could some admin please consider some level of protection for Ape? This dif shows that for almost a month there have been constant irrelevant and vandalism additions. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:21, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Taxonomic dispute examples needed

I'm looking for examples of:

1. A case where an article on an animal is at the scientific name (genus or bi/trinomial) specifically because the question "what is the most common name" is so unclear/disputed that picking one would be a POV-pushing exercise and no consensus was ever reached to pick one. (I.e., the issue is that we cannot determine what the most common name is.)
2. A case where an article on an animal is at the scientific name because "what is the most common name?" results in an answer that is itself subject to taxonomic dispute. (I.e., the issue is that we know it's most common, but it's accuracy is reliably questioned).

These are not the same as the most common name conflicting with other uses, or there being no common name (e.g. because it's a newly described species); we already have all that well-covered at WP:FAUNA. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 03:35, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Not a helpful response to your request, but the reality is that most problems are caused by the reverse, i.e. the insistence on the use of English names as titles for animal articles when these do not map onto taxa. For example, as the Rat article rightly says, "the common terms rat and mouse are not taxonomically specific"; so why are articles about Rattus and Mus at Rat and Mouse? Peter coxhead (talk) 10:01, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Noted (I also saw the big list below); will bookmark this and see if something about it can be worked into relevant guidelines. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 11:00, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Also, I can think of more examples where instead of using the scientific name for taxa with multiple popular common names, one of the common names is used. Cougar is an example, and though I don't have time to look, I'd be surprised if it weren't debated. A lot of obscure lemur species also have multiple common names, and personally, I just make sure Wiki follows what I call the "lemur bible", Lemurs of Madagascar, which uses a primary common name and lists alternates in English and other languages. I also know of cases where projects and/or individual editors use scientific names for taxa of more obscure species, even if a common name is available... usually because the academic literature only uses the scientific name. – Maky « talk » 17:09, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

A lemur example might make sense if there's a case of one being at the sci. name here because of too much warring over the common one. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 11:00, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Commonname and taxon imperfectly overlap

Please understand that this list is simply intended to highlight a phenomenon which is interesting to note, not saying that in my view anything is wrong with any of these articles. Necessarily. Wikipedia may have already arrived at the optimum solution to any "problem" that may arise from these situations. I do think it does prove that there is nothing unusual or necessarily bad about an English animal word not having perfect overlap with a taxon. Chrisrus (talk) 21:56, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Understood; I'm simply seeking examples I can blue-link to illustrate the above two types of situations I outlined, instead of making one up. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 11:00, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Animal Articles

The following words refer to existant referents which have no scientific synomym; that is say, English words that do not correspond to any taxon; any Greek or Latin-based Taxonomic word: no catagory such as order, family, genus, or species. Please feel free to edit it or leave me a message about this list and what I do with it. Chrisrus (talk) 20:37, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

• Dog Split into two taxa, C.l.dingo and C.l.familiaris
• Mole If you are a talpid and a mole, you're a True Mole. There are two "moles" that fit the English word, but are as unrelated as mammals can be.
• Quail Any small roundish ground bird that reminds English-speakers of the British quail.
• Whale Unless you say a porpoise is a whale, which is true, but English doesn't care.
• Bullfrog Any bullish frog.
• Civet Any such basal carnivore.
• Vulture Evolved twice, but they're really not all that alike.
• Fish Did you know that there is no taxon that equates to the English word "fish"? Not anymore!
• Fox New and old world foxes evolved separately.
• Squirrels English word's referent is rarely inclusive of woodchucks and such. "Squirrel" washes smoothly into "chipmonk" based on the tail.
• Shrew-mole Neither here nor there.
• Mistletoe And many other plants evolved more than once.
• Monkey Defined as what it isn't.
• Mongoose Many recently moved taxa.
• Mole-rat Evolved more than once.
• Mole-shrew Any shrew that has taken to a mole-shrew lifestyle and so evolved.
• Porcupine Any rodent so evolved. Has happened twice.
• Anteater Properly refers to the South American anteaters, but applies to any animal that has so evolved, which has happened repeatedly.
• Ant bear Any large lumbering anteater.
• Wolf Canis lupis = Wolf + (Dog = Dingo + Dog). Also includes rufus and probably others that are part Canis latrans.
• Coyote Google "Canis soupus", you'll be glad you did. The Eastern Coyote is a hybrid.
• Worm Any wormy thing, and some not so wormy things. As simple no-brainer for natural selection, it has evolved again and again. There will be worms on other planets, too.
• Bacteria What I said about "worm" applies here. As unrelated to each other as any taxa can be.
• Pig A central referent orbited by progressivly vaguer orbits. Suina is pretty much all pigs, too, now that the hippos have been removed. Some of these basal animals might not be pigs. Evolved twice, unless the common ancestor of the Suids and Tayassuids was also a pig.
• Jackal Any Canis species or subspecies that doesn't seem big or lupine enough for the word "Wolf"
• Human, that article defines it as fully modern homo sapeins, but some experts use it for any Homo species, while others insist that the term be restricted to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens. At the moment both Homo sapiens Homo sapiens sapiens.
• Tube Worm Collection of taxa dealt with not only with a disambiguation page but also an article called Tube worm (body plan)
• Skunk This article is not about skunks but rather the wider skunk family of animals, including their closest but still quite distant relatives, the Stink badgers, who, despite being more closely related to skunks, aren't called badgers for no reason. In fact, it took recent DNA research to convince many experts that they weren't badgers and have only been since then been declared a member of the wider skunk family, although they never said they actually were "skunks."
• Lemur Nowadays, any Malagassy primate, even the unique Aye-aye, although others support the English language's reluctance to apply the word "lemur" to Aye-ayes.

I'll chime in on one of them: "monkey" is simply a paraphyletic term because we like to separate out apes and humans. As an article, Monkey could be developed, and that is its only problem. I haven't tackled it because to do it right, it will probably take as much research and writing time as Lemur did... and that took me many months. What will probably be the biggest obstacle is dividing and summarizing common information between that article, Simian, New World monkey, and Old World monkey. However, it can be done. I feel there are enough issues that pertain to both Old and New World monkeys to merit a full article. – Maky « talk » 17:41, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Lemur is an excelent article and an excellent example of how to confront, head on, the taxonomy of a common name in a reader-friendly way. In fact, it goes so far as to have a spin-off article called Taxonomy of Lemurs. All the other "Taxonomy of..."-titled articles I know of only deal with scientific names. It makes me think that other articles ought to take notice. I do, however, wish it could say something about why the word was applied to flying lemurs so comfortably. Seems like it was the skull shape. Chrisrus (talk) 05:31, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Bacteria is also simply a paraphyletic group, except the status of the excluded group (Eucaryotes) is a bit more complex. We have in fact three rather long and quite good articles, Monera, Bacteria and Procaryote covering different aspects of the same group. All of them being important terms in their own right, I don't thing merging them will make Wikipedia better. Petter Bøckman (talk) 20:59, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I have read Paraphyly. Many articles send us readers there. Warm-blooded animals is one example they give there of a paraphyletic group, but it could not be said in another way, "warm-bloodedness seems to have evolved more than once"? Such wording raises eyebrows and makes a reader say "Please, go on, explain" and makes us want to know more. Don't get me wrong, I appreciated being being sent to that article the first couple of times, but if each of such articles could replace or augment that link with simple words telling us what it means in the particular context, readers might at times be better served. Chrisrus (talk) 05:31, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Not quite, you're mixing paraphyly with polyphyly. Warm-blooded animals have as you say evolved more than once, making it a polyphyletic group. Reptiles on the other hand is the ancestor of both birds and mammals, so while reptiles have evolved only once, not all descendants of reptiles are reptiles, making it paraphyletic (taxonomically "incomplete"). Petter Bøckman (talk) 10:03, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Petter beat me to it in an edit conflict: to add to his comment, the salient characteristics of members of a paraphyletic group have not evolved more than once: they are "left-overs" from their ancestor. It just so happens that another group descended from the same ancestor has characteristics which differentiate it from the paraphyletic group. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:18, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

There's a difference, I think, between two situations: an English name used because of a superficial resemblance between organisms and an English name used for a paraphyletic group which has genuine similarities because of shared ancestry.

• The difference between a "rat" and a "mouse" in English is basically one of size; the existence of these words depends on the accidental fact that there is a size gap between the species found in England. Other languages which may have developed in places where there are more rat/mouse-like rodent species with no clear size difference don't make this distinction (it's not clearly made in Latin; although different words exist in Modern Greek, my experience is that the distinction is not consistently made; Malay uses tikus for many kinds of rodent although tetikus can be used for small ones, etc.). Having articles on "Rat" and "Mouse" makes no sense scientifically.
• On the other hand, paraphyletic groups like monkeys do have many characteristics in common. It needs to be explained that excluded groups such as apes share many of the same characteristics, but this doesn't invalidate the shared characteristics of monkeys.

All this makes me glad I edit plant articles, where we overwhelmingly use scientific names (and usually move articles at common names to the scientific name when ambiguities arise). Peter coxhead (talk) 10:18, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

There are many in WP birds too....Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:44, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

• Raven some species in the genus Corvus

montane forest

Is there any special reason that montane forest redirects to cloud forest? A Web search suggests that it can also refer to dryish, Temperate Zone high-altitude forests such as our ponderosa pine forests here in New Mexico. Is there any reason to have "montane forest" take the reader anywhere, or should any links be to "montane" and "forest"? —JerryFriedman (Talk) 23:58, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I've noted when writing articles on species and genera that the coverage of habitats and habitat classifications in Wikipedia is not good. My reading of the literature suggests that whereas "cloud forest" is a specific term for a habitat whose ecology is determined by regular envelopment in cloud and mist, a "montane forest" is just a high-altitude forest.

However, there's a more serious problem which needed fixing. Montane Forest redirected to Forest whereas Montane forest redirected to Cloud forest. This is quite contrary to all WP policies on article names and redirects. So for the present I've made both capitalizations of "montane forest" redirect to Forest. Ideally there should be a separate article on this subject. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:33, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I started a stub. It contains everything I know about mountain forests in general. Unfortunately, I started it at Montane Forest. I've requested admin help. Anyway, I hope you or anyone else who's interested will take a look to see whether it's worth keeping or expanding. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 05:41, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

While we're at it, should we have a general article (or set index or something) on stunted forest, pygmy forest (mostly about California), dwarf forest, elfin forest, krummholz, shola, tuckamore, and whatever else? If so, what should it be called? I realize this is just one of the many problems about habitat articles. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 04:19, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

As you note, habitats are not well-covered in Wikipedia; I guess part of the problem is that they fall between/across different Wikiprojects. Thus Montane forest has been expanded largely from a botanical point of view so far; more should be added about animal life in such a habitat (or more precisely in such habitats, since montane forests in different latitudes are very different). "Habitat classifications by altitude" (I'm not suggesting this title for an article!) is another general topic which should be covered, i.e. the lowland – submontane – montane – subalpine – alpine – nival sequence, how the boundaries are defined, how the plants and animals differ, etc. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:48, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Altitudinal zonation? --Stemonitis (talk) 11:35, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

This actually originated as a parsing error by whatever bot made us articles for all IUCN Red List taxa. It interpreted "Forest, montane" as "Forest" + a fictional category "montane". You will occasionally find "It lives in montanes, forests..." or similar.

I usually quick-fixed it to "montane forest"; some otherts did the same, yet others did something slightly different. Thanks Jerry for finally tackling this. It is coming along nicely, montane is a good redirect that can be made into a sort of index for all these articles.

Possibly, anyone could run a script/bot across Special:WhatLinksHere/Montane and pick out/fix all the species. There's literally hundreds, if not 1000s of articles that got messed up... Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:42, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Synonym redirects

How important is it to make redirects for the synonyms listed in species articles? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:02, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I think it's a matter of judgement whether anyone is likely to search using the synonym. American Black-bellied Plover to European Grey Plover is a no brainer, but I wouldn't redirect from Scots dialect "tarrock" to Common Tern. Similarly, Common House Martin should have a redirect from Delichon urbica as well as Delichon urbicum, since the former was the accepted binomial until 2004, but not from the long-obsolete Hirundo urbica Jimfbleak - talk to me? 11:09, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I disagree rather strongly. Any synonym listed in the taxobox should be redirected to current valid combination, with more complicated stipulations for subjective synonyms. A user reading an 18th century paper and coming across Hirundo urbica will be looking for exactly the same taxon if he/she comes to Wikipedia, regardless of the length of the time the name has been considered invalid.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 11:27, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Obsidian. Reading older litterature with outdated names can be very confusing, and a redirect in Wikipedia would certainly help! Petter Bøckman (talk) 11:33, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it's that important to have redirects; searches (via Google if not Wikipedia) will always bring up the old synonym if it's mentioned in the article. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:54, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

That adds an unnecessary step to searching and creates misleading red links when synonyms are used in articles; which ultimately can give rise to duplicate articles if an editor happens to be unaware of the synonymy as Melburnian notes. Especially in the more obscure but nevertheless unambiguous objective synonyms. Clicking a red link, after all, does not take you to the search pages, but to a new blank page.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 12:47, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I would agree that it's not a priority to add redirects from synonyms except those that are widely used (for whatever reason), but it certainly does no harm. What's perhaps more important is that the redirects that are put in place are correctly marked. They should all have {{R from synonym}}, {{R to scientific name}} or {{R from scientific name}}, as appropriate. (Actually, R from synonym is used for all sorts of things; it would be better to have a more specialised {{R from taxonomic synonym}} that could be used solely for synonyms of formal taxa; it could even be extended to {{R from alternative combination}}, {{R from junior synonym}} and so on.) Marking the redirects enables users and robots to understand how the title of the redirect relates to the main article title; linking the text "Delichon urbicum" is not wrong, whereas redirects from misspellings and so on would indicate something that needs to be altered. I consider creating redirects to be a routine part of article creation, but I recognise it's a desirable outcome, not the top priority. --Stemonitis (talk) 11:36, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

{{R from taxonomic synonym}} is a good idea. The others run into the problem of differences between the main codes of nomenclature (and the heated dispute among some zoologists as to whether an alternative combination is or is not a synonym). Peter coxhead (talk) 11:54, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

The shorter the better I'd say, is it possible to create shortcuts for those templates? I routinely create a lot of redirects every time I create articles, with all the possible combinations (ucase, lcase, with or without dashes, compound or separate words etc.) I'm aware of them but have never used them simply because of the sheer tediousness of remembering the exact templates to be used and the number of redirects I go through.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 13:00, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I created {{Rsci}} awhile ago. Dunno if folks still use it... - UtherSRG (talk) 13:03, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure we can come up with abbreviated versions. I was just trying to convey the concept, rather than to specify the eventual solution. (I wasn't trying to distinguish between "taxonomic synonyms" and "nomenclatural synonyms", for instance; there may well be a better phrase.) Is {{R taxsym}} short/memorable enough? --Stemonitis (talk) 13:04, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

{{Rsci}} looks good. Shouldn't it be {{Rtaxsyn}} to match with the previous though? I'm not too sure about having to distinguish between different types of synonyms (would add considerably to the work required), but I agree we should have a different template specifically for taxonomic synonyms.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 13:17, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

What {{R taxsyn}} or whatever it gets called should really mean is something like "redirect from an alternative scientific name" so that we don't get into disputes (as has happened at some animal articles) over what is a synonym, what is an illegitimate name, what is a name which has not been validly published (often the case with plant names used in horticulture for example), etc. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:02, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I usually create redirects from well-known synonyms straight after creating an article to prevent duplicate articles being created. Also they pick up synonym links used in existing and future articles, for example mentions of rare plants species in a national park where the source uses older names.Melburnian (talk) 12:28, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Picking up this point (and Obsidian Soul's reply to me above), the tricky issue is what counts as a "well-known" synonym. For example, I've been using Anderson's massive work to write about cacti recently. He seems to aim for taxonomically complete lists of synonyms. The same is true of the main source I used for Schlumbergera and its species.

1. Should all known synonyms (in the broad sense of the word) be mentioned in an article? So far I haven't taken this view. I can't see that Wikipedia readers need this information. Specialists who would want it can use the many online databases.
2. Should all synonyms mentioned in an article be set up as redirects? Generally I would say yes, given that I think that only the "well-known" ones should be in the article, but there are exceptions where this doesn't work (e.g. the synonym is now the correct name of something else).

Is there any evidence that people create duplicate articles under very old synonyms which wouldn't be classed as "well-known"? Peter coxhead (talk) 13:54, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that's been the case for duplicates I've encountered, though I can't remember what those articles were. Plus, take the example of lists of genera/species where synonyms often exist alongside valid/correct names undetected simply because they were not redirected to their correct articles when they should have. I come across the latter very often, especially where editors simply add all the names that look like they belong there without bothering to verify validity. Redirecting synonyms aren't a requirement of course, but AFAIK there is no argument against adding them, other than additional work for the editor. They're synonyms, they're the very things redirects were made for - alternative names for the same subject. If we create redirects for all the possible common names, why not scientific names? And again, subjective synonyms are a completely different thing.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 14:15, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

It isn't all that simple. The number of synonyms can sometimes be huge. Speaking for WP:GAST, we mention all known synonyms in the taxobox. Furthermore we mention a list of the synonyms, as we go along, in the articles about genera and families : see Pyrgulina. Any search under the name of the synonym in Wikipedia (or in Google) will then turn up the synonym, if we have already treated the accepted name with an article. There about 80,000 to 100,000 species in Mollusca and the synonyms number somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 (no one really knows). If we have to make a redirect for every synonym we encounter, then wikipedia will be flooded with redirects. Just imagine the number of redirects that would have to be created for this subspecies Conus ventricosus mediterraneus. On the other hand, we make a redirect each time the name of a species becomes a synonym and we have to make a move to the accepted name, such as was done with Conus mediterraneus. Each project in WP:TOL should make such a consideration for its own project, but certainly not make it a general rule for all. JoJan (talk) 14:21, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Redirects are cheap. And again, it doesn't really matter how "well-known" they are (a completely subjective judgement in itself which brings a whole plethora of other problems) or how old. What matters is that these are referring to the same subject. -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 14:24, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

[ec: Great minds think alike!] Redirects are cheap. The problem is not with Wikipedia being "flooded" with them, but the time taken (by us) to create them. --Stemonitis (talk) 14:25, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

(another ec) What is the problem with "flooding" Wikipedia with redirects? We already have almost 4 million articles and more than 26 million pages in this Wikipedia; a few hundred thousand extra redirects won't kill the servers. It shouldn't even be difficult to write a bot that automatically redirects all synonyms listed in the taxobox (though such a bot can run into problems with homonyms). Ucucha (talk) 14:26, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Some Taxonomic synonyms have articles of their own. Dasycyon hagenbecki, for example, is an interesting little story about a terrible mistake or hoax, but is now listed as a synonym for C.l.familiaris because any specimen with that label is filed under "domestic dog". Any invalid taxa with an interesting story like that should get it's own article. Not only embarassing hoaxes or errors, but also just any interesting or important explanations for how the an invalid taxon came to be used in the first place and/or why it came to be invalid now, there are many reasons. Look where Homo sapiens asiaticus luridus, etc. redirect, for example. Very interesting. Other invalid taxa such as Canis antarcticus have disambiguation pages of their own. New Rule: No reverting with edit summaries saying words to the effect of "these don't need redirecting or articles because they are invalid taxa." Because he-who-shall-remain-nameless has done that to me. Find some other grounds if you must, but there is no principle that invalid taxa shall be black-font, not left as red or blue links. Chrisrus (talk) 15:38, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Those are relatively uncommon though (I've only encountered one of those in my editing: Shillingsworthia shillingsworthii). While there are many reasons for synonyms, most of them are quite boring and straightforward. These are best explained in the article of the taxon itself, that's the main purpose of the Taxonomy (or Systematics) section after all.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 15:58, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Shillinsworthia shillingsworthi should get a section redirect. Although a simple article redirect is good, I had to dig around to find the section in which it's mentioned, so a section redirect would be even better.

The "boring" majority you describe should redirect to the "Taxonomy" section of the articles if that's the only place they are mentioned.

Having said that, however, I'd like to state that the story behind an invalid taxon may be boring to one person but interesting to another. Isn't there always a citation where they explain the grounds that it's invalid? A short article might say "Examplia exampli" is an invalid taxon which has been used for The Norwegian blue parrot (Parrotus montypythoni). It was declared invalid on the grounds that it had already been described and given another name earlier by someone else.(Cite Book taxonomic decisions of The Society of Respected Authorities Who Decide Such Things.)" And then stop, that's all such an article might ever need to say. It might be interesting or important to know whether it was a mistake that calls into question the reputation of those who proposed and used it, or whether it was just because of some other reason that would not do so, such as the fact that someone thought they discovered something new but could not have known that another had already met and named that species, and so had done nothing wrong. This seems at least potentially important to know, at least to some people. Chrisrus (talk) 17:16, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

That's quite unrealistic and would effectively increase the workload many times over. We don't even have articles for all the accepted taxa yet, much less start writing articles on invalid ones. The example you gave is one of the most common reasons for a name being declared invalid. When such synonyms are notable they are ideally discussed in the Taxonomy section. But aside from a very few exceptions, they really do not deserve separate articles. They would be so short with so limited a context that there's no reason why it could not be discussed in the article of the accepted name in the first place. The author citations included with each name also already provide a limited overview of the history of the name. Sometimes explicitly, e.g. names marked with "nom nud." (nomen nudum) already give you a pretty good idea of why it's not accepted. So aside from instances of weird namings, I would actually agree with whoever he-who-shall-remain-nameless is. I can't imagine any instances where linking a name you know is invalid would be justifiable. They should be changed to the accepted name lest a reader misinterprets it to be acceptable; or redirected/piped if the name needs to be displayed as is (as in the case of type species in the taxoboxes). -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 18:44, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

You say you can't imagine why an invalid taxon should link, but each has a story, as in the example Dasycyon hagenbecki I referred to above, or Canis hallstromi which is more notable than many valid taxa. We won't have to worry about people misunderstanding things as you describe if we are careful and do it properly. Chrisrus (talk) 15:45, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think we have to worry about what invalid taxa should have their own articles, and what should have a redirect: If an invalid taxon is interesting enough for an editor to make an article, well, then it is clearly interesting enough. Wikipedia is full of articles on the critters in the Mos Eisley cantina, so there's clearly room for articles on Brontosaurus, Trachodon and Homo troglodytes (a redirect, article and section redirect respectively). Every now and then I see well meaning editors argue that this and that article should not be written, because there are other articles that are more important. This is not a valid reason for stopping editors from making articles. We can not force editors to make certain articles over others as long as Wikipedia is a voluntary project. The articles that are made are made, if someone wants other articles, then he need to make them him/her self. Petter Bøckman (talk) 20:13, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I usually interpret MOS:BOLDTITLE insofar as that anything bolded in an article should redirect to this article (or disambiguate there).

As regards Category:Obsolete taxonomic groups, the articles there should be our guideline. If quality wortk, such as here, can be delivered, it is a welcome addition. Bare-bones taxo stubs, rather not. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:32, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Redirection categorization templates

I thought it was worth separating out this thread from the discussion of when to include synonyms in articles.

My understanding is that the currently available templates should be used in redirects to taxon articles like this:

	Redirect to:
Redirect from:	English name	Scientific name
English name	{{R from synonym}}	{{R to scientific name}}={{R from English name}}
Scientific name	{{R from scientific name}}	{{R from synonym}}

1. The English name → English name cases arise mostly from typography, e.g. fully capitalized English names to sentence case English names.
2. Although their names don't make it clear (although the template documentation does), {{R to scientific name}} is only supposed to be used from an English name, and {{R from scientific name}} to an English name. (I prefer "English" to "common" here because I include things like "acarid" to "Acaridae".)
3. (I've now provided an alternative name for the English name → Scientific name case so that the "from" style of name can be used consistently if desired. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:27, 10 March 2012 (UTC))

I think that, picking up Stemonitis' comment above, it would be useful to be able to distinguish the two cells which can at present (if I'm right) only use {{R from synonym}}.

Proposal We create and use {{R from alternative scientific name}} for the Scientific name → Scientific name case. I thought about "R to correct scientific name" but (a) the correct name can change so the wording might become wrong (b) "correct" has strict meaning in the nomenclature codes so is best avoided here. On the other hand, "R to alternative scientific name" seems a bit weak. Obviously some abbreviations for the new template could be created as redirects, e.g. {{Raltsci}}. The only problem I see is that Category:Redirects from synonyms is already largely but not entirely populated by redirects which ought then to use the new categorization. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:17, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

One minor point: I think when categorising redirects between two non-scientific names, I would always use something more descriptive ({{R from alternative capitalisation}}, {{R from alternative name}}, {{R from title without diacritics}} and so on). --Stemonitis (talk) 10:51, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Would you use that as well as or instead of?

I'm also not sure if it would be of value to be able to pick up all four cells above as involving taxa, i.e. separate from any other kind of "synonym". Any views? Peter coxhead (talk) 18:32, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

As no-one objected, I have created {{R from alternative scientific name}}. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:37, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Anyone knowledgeable about global ecosystems?

The discussion at Talk:Montane forest#Merging and/or renaming could do with some input from someone knowledgeable about global ecosystems, if there is any such editor around. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:01, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Taxon Nomina author/date mess

Regarding taxon authors in lists. I would be tempoted to propose a fairly strict policy, because this mess is getting out of hand. I am trying to get Catocala a better "Well-written" rating and naturally one would improve list layout to make it more easily legible. Now, it is an absolute pain to look for a taxon.

Doing so, I noted an inconsistency rate of taxon author/dates between list and taxoboxes of about 15%. Didn't count it, but I'd safely say it's between 20 and 10%. That is too fricking high for Wikipedia. If would mean that every 10th word at least in an article is slightly but (for the average user) invisibly and insiduously wrong. Now, even Encyclopedia Britannica achieves higher standards. By Wikipedia standards, it is abysmal. The list, the taxonboxes, they simply cannot be trusted.

The present proliferation of listing taxon author/date is apparently not manageable and must probably be curtailed. Severely. (It used to be more restrained, and we did not have so many errors back then)

Rationale: What use is author/date? Usually not much, considering the price we pay for having it everywhere:

1. In scientific writing, author/date are usually left out; this is the convenient way and should be done so in casual writing also. However, they are usually cited at least once somewhere in an article. Proper style is to cite them or discuss them where important or most important. In practice, this is either within a taxonomic narrative, a taxonomic list, or in case of ambiguities such as homonyms, synonymy etc. But zoology papers that are not about nomenclature or taxonomy often do not give them anywhere (even "pure" systematics/phylogenetics papers sometimes do). In botany, giving the authorship at least once somewhere is essentially mandatory due to the homonymy proliferation; even some botany authors leave out the data entirely however. And when scientists write author/date outside a taxon list or table -- i.e., if they are inserted into a running paragraph -- it is considered good style to smallcaps them or similar.
2. The general public has a hard time citing taxa correctly ("T. Rex" syndrome). Citing author/date in a casual context outside a specific (scientific) setting is stylistic hypercorrection; popular writers do it more often than scientists. But it is not professional. Wikipedia should not endorse bad writing style.
3. Generally, except in case of homonymies, author/date of taxa are fairly useless to the standard user. Interesting trivia ("how many [taxon] were described after 2000?"), but Wikipedia is explicitly not a collection of what is equivalent to statistical trivia. We should to have the data somewhere of course, but we do not to have it more than once, especially if that is at the mot obvious location (i.e. the taxobox).
4. The present author/name inconsistencies must be sorted out sooner or later anyway. The quickest way to do so is to collect all such information at one point. At present however, nomenclatorial data on WP:TOL is in need of complete review.
5. While most errors are small (parentheses wrong, date not correctly determined, authors ambiguous) and easily resolved, perhaps 10% are serious. Keeping it all accurate would require constant maintenance effort, and at some point the workload exceeds the workload we can put up. (Arguably, this is already the case.)
6. It wastes space. A lot of it. And we need every bit of space if we want to have as little as comprehensive "scientific name + common name" lists for diverse taxa. Genera with 150 species, it's everyday occurrence in beetles and moths.
7. It makes reading the text harder; it is a useless baroque flourish in most contexts, especially if given in the very first sentences.
8. Sources are generally pieces of shit. Seriously. A list one finds on the internet is not a taxonomic/nomenclatorial source; it is not even a WP:RS. There are the good web databases/lists everyone knows for their taxon, museum databases etc, but these are often enough faulty also. There is one and only one completely reliable source for taxon author/date: the original description.

In plain English:

Wikipedia has become the largest, and worst, source in the world for nomenclatorial data. "Worst" referring to both accuracy and style-of-presentation.

Hence, I ponder proposing something along the lines of:

1. "No taxon author/date is given, except 1. at redlinks, 2. in taxoboxes, and 3. where it is pretty damn important (homonymies, mostly)." (This implies that all author/date info we have is moved up the tree towards the pertient taxoboxes as far as possible. E.g. if we only have the family article with a redlist of genera, the genera get author/date. When the genus articles are made, author/date move to the genus article taxobox, and the process is repeated for species (red)links)
2. "Taxon author/date refs MUST be the original description. Stuff "someone found on the Web" goes in "External links"." (Yes, even "known good lists" - even IUCN, Fauna Europaea, WoRMS, biolib.cz, funet.fi, GRIN etc have 5-10% error rate. Claiming a source but actually having only a crap source belies the principle that makes Wikipedia work: Readers trust our sources to be good WP:RS. They do not habitually read the fulltext source, they usually just check out that "sources exist" in case they ever need one. Additional rationale: if we do this, we do have the orig. descr., for whatever we want to do with it. Which can be quite a lot, and for many spp. is actually all we will ever get.)

(Additional guideline: If taxon author/date are to be mentioned in the article maintext, do it as a proper narrative. E.g. at the end of the intro section, or in the taxonomy Systematics and nomenclature/Classification section something like "Blah blub was first scientifically described (as Bulb blub) by Mork Schmorkus in 1796, and put in its present genus by Hank Kolf in 1999."

If you really prefer to simply throw a "The Great Gumbletree Blah blub Schmorkus (Kolf), 1796 (1999) is a tropical rainforest canopy tree endemic to Belize" at the unsuspecting reader, at least make it {{aut|Schmorkus (Kolf), 1796 (1999)}} or <small>Schmorkus (Kolf)</small> or something similar. Please.

PS: Remember the rules of biological nomenclature do not require you to give author/date within a narrative. It will be in the taxobox anyway, that's what the taxobox is there for (among other things). Remember also that just beacuse you habitually read over stuff like "The Great Gumbletree Blah blub Schmorkus (Kolf), 1796 (1999) is a tropical rainforest canopy tree endemic to Belize", most people out there would more likely think "WTF?!" instead of understanding much of it. Most do not even have English as a first language, let alone Scientiese.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:53, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I generally don't put the author (again note that most botanical disciplines with a few exceptions don't include the date) anywhere except on lists of taxa and in the taxobox. I'll have to think more about your point 1, but on point 2, I completely disagree. Original descriptions are often crap, especially if they're from the early 1800s. I was looking at one the other day and it's a simple lineup of new names with a very short Latin description, no author information except that implied by the name on the book. And sometimes the author is attributed incorrectly for a couple centuries. Only recent analysis of supporting manuscripts and letters allowed Juliet Wege to determine that the authority of Stylidium is not Sw. ex Willd., but just Sw. (see [5]). Further, not everyone has access to the original publication, so it shouldn't be cited when the editor hasn't seen the source: WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. I agree that online sources like ZipCodeZoo and the Plant List and even EOL are often terrible sources for authors. IPNI even has its faults, but it's mostly correct, which is why I cite it frequently. IMHO, I think we just need to encourage editors to get this information right from reliable sources, principles we already have and are well supported. This doesn't seem to be a specific problem to author data, but a general plea to use the best reliable sources you can find. Rkitko ^(talk) 00:38, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Citing the original description may be useful sometimes, but it is certainly not enough. When we quote the authority, we are not just stating that that person described such a species, but that theirs is the accepted, valid name, which normally, but not always, means it was the first description of the species. It may have been later rejected, it may be a junior homonym, or any number of other exceptions may apply. That's why we need a third-party source such as WoRMS, IUCN, etc., to confirm that the authority is correct. I generally only cite the original description for details of the morphology or ecology, not for the authority itself. I don't see that your first point is really fixing a serious problem. Small caps are explicitly forbidden from such cases, and I've had to spend a lot of time in the past removing {{aut}} that you (Dysmorodrepanis) have added; you're pretty much the only one, and it would be preferable if you could stop. It's definitely not something to be promoted. --Stemonitis (talk) 01:45, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I would agree that authorities are not best placed in running text, at least on Wikipedia, but I would also second everything that Rkitko said; if we use the best sources, accuracy increases. --Stemonitis (talk) 01:59, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

We do NOT in fact use the best sources; the rule you propose is proven unenforceable! The third-party source is the appropriate Code of Nomenclature, which sets unequivocal rules that no sloppy database administrator or weblist compiler is allowed to violate. And Wikipedia editors are not allowed to volate them either. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:37, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I can't follow this argument at all. You think that instead of citing, say, WoRMS, we should cite the ICZN, which almost certainly doesn't mention the name in question? Even if a name is invalid according to the code, if it is used by reliable sources, then we must follow it. For instance, if one of us discovers a case of homonymy, then we have to continue to use the invalid homonym until a replacement is published elsewhere. It can be one of us who publishes it (not unheard of), but it cannot be introduced on Wikipedia. The codes limit us only indirectly in that they limit what appears in reliable sources. Avoiding original research is a general principle across Wikipedia, and I'm surprised that it's being misunderstood here. --Stemonitis (talk) 14:55, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

As others have noted, there is a major fallacy in the use of the original publication as the source for the authority of a taxon: how do you know which is the original publication? The only way you can decide on this is to use a secondary reliable source which uses taxonomic research to discover the answer to this question. Hence this secondary RS is the actual source. If I write that the authority for the name X y is Jones (with or without a date), I need to cite a source that says that Jones was indeed the authority for this name; the publication by Jones is useless for this purpose – it doesn't tell you whether the name was properly published according to the relevant code. At best the original publication tells you that Jones claimed to have established the name X y, not whether Jones succeeded. This statement "There is one and only one completely reliable source for taxon author/date: the original description" is simply wrong.

(In fact, using the original publication only is a violation of WP:PRIMARY: "All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source". By using the original publication as the only source, you're making a judgement that it succeeded according to the relevant code and you need a source for this judgement.)

Wikipedia is as much bound by the Codes of Nomenclature as anyone else except Creationists and other intellectual lowlife. What constitutes the source for a taxon is not determined by a secondary source or anyone's interpretation, but by mandatory rules (Chapters 3-4 and 11 of the ICZN Code, Chapter IV of the ICBN) to which everyone IS REQUIRED to stick. And these rules do not grant any space to "interpretations"; they were designed to prtevent exactly what you fear. Thus, WP:PRIMARY is not violated. In fact, it may be argued that we must use the original description only, because WP:RS overrules everything else regarding sources, and there is only one truly reliable source for taxon author/dates: the original description. The "'no' primary sources" rule serves to prevent ambiguous and subjective interpretations, whereas the ambiguity in the present case is caused by the secondary (and especially tertiary) sources! Here, the primary source is always right (except in gross spelling errors, if these are corrected later - in which case we do have the secondary source at hand already). And in any case, as soon as a conflict between secondary/tertiary sources occurs (and there are literally thousands of them, those databases are notoriously sloppy when it comes to disambiguating authors such as "Meyer"s or distinguishing date-of-issue from date-of-valid-publication (anything published in the PZSL is liable to be mis-dated), we have to turn to the original description anyway! E.g. for determining whether date-of-publication requires square brackets or not, the primary source MUST be considered (and cited).

Consider the case of legal documents, such as the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Here, the primary source is used throughout. Since the Codes of Nomenclature are equivalent to "law", this is a close parallel. As an example closer to biology, consider Copernicium#Naming, where the pertinent IUPAC documents (primary sources) are cited with nobody batting an eye. Your reservations against primary sources make no sense in any field where stuff is decided by mandatory rules; hence the exceptions in WP:PRIMARY. (For legal issues, we are even forced to add a disclaimer to cover the problems caused by secondary and tertiary sources, because only the primary wording of laws is binding and authoritative, not their subsequent interpretation!) (talk) 14:37, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but your analogy is quite wrong. If the ICZN and ICBN listed all accepted names within them then of course they would be the authoritative sources. But they do not. They contain the rules which apply to names, not the names themselves (other than a relatively small proportion in examples or conserved names, etc.). The ICZN and ICBN are authoritative as regards the rules (and any names they specifically list). The application of the rules in deciding whether all other names are ok needs to be sourced. The precise analogy seems to be using a legal document to decide whether or not a particular trial or judicial decision was correct. This would be wrong. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:46, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I was nowhere talking about taxon names. I was talking about author names and authorship dates. E.g. which "[Schiffermüller], 1775", "Schiffermüller in Denis & Schiffermüller, 1775" or "Denis & Schiffermüller, [1775]" -- if any-- is correct. What to do if one source gives "(L.) Blume" and another "(L.f.) Blume" and a third "L.". Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:13, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I completely agree that authorities should not be included in running text as a matter of course, but only in taxoboxes and lists. On the other hand, in some areas of taxonomy, there is so much muddle that only by including authorities can you disambiguate. To take just two I've worked on lately: Epiphyllum Haw. is a different genus to Epiphyllum Pfeiff.; Ophrys holoserica auct. is a different species to Ophrys holoserica (Burm.f) ex Greuter. Of course there are ways of saying this other than writing the Latin name followed by the authority, and these are clearly better for the general reader, but the authority sometimes needs to be mentioned, even in running text.

This is precisely one of the 3 exceptions I mentioned in the suggestion (the third one, "pretty damn important"). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:37, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Small caps There is continuing discussion of deleting the {{smallcaps}} template to which {{aut}} is a redirect. MOS:SMALLCAPS is quite clear: "Change small caps to title case." {{Aut}} is a monstrosity and should not be used. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:49, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

In proper scientific writing, this "monstrosity" is used regularly. If Wikipedia is so stupid as to reject what everyone else in the business accepts, then to hell with its respectability among the scientific community, which a lot of people have worked damn hard to build in the first place! Matter of fact, I cannot find anything at Template talk:Smallcaps to support your claims. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:37, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Try looking at Template:Smallcaps: "small caps should be avoided and reduced to one of the other title cases or normal case and markup should be kept simple". --Stemonitis (talk) 14:55, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I tried looking at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2008_December_2#Template:Smallcaps instead. The result of the discussion is unequivocal. In any case, I would not recommend to use smallcaps here; I'd rather completely avoid citing author/date in a way where professional authors would use smallcaps. Make it a narrative instead, as per example given. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 15:06, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Some professional authors would use small caps, perhaps, although I have to say that I can't recall seeing it in the botanical literature. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:46, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

And I recall seeing it a lot in the zoological literature. It probably depends on the journal. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:08, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

It may be helpful to consider the rules by which we are bound:

• IZCN Code (relevant: Chapter 11 Article 51)

51.1. Optional use of names of authors. The name of the author does not form part of the name of a taxon and its citation is optional, although customary and often advisable.
Recommendation 51A. Citation of author and date. The original author and date of a name should be cited at least once in each work dealing with the taxon denoted by that name. This is especially important in distinguishing between homonyms and in identifying species-group names which are not in their original combinations. If the surname and forename(s) of an author are liable to be confused, these should be distinguished as in scientific bibliographies.

• ICBN (relevant: Capter IV Sections 3-4)

46.1. In publications, particularly those dealing with taxonomy and nomenclature, it may be desirable, even when no bibliographic reference to the protologue is made, to cite the author(s) of the name concerned [...]

In a nutshell, they suggest a "use it sparingly, but use it at least once except in case of homonymies etc. where it should be used whenever there is risk of confusion" policy.

As a case in point, Noctua (moth). This is what the current SOP will get us: 10 taxa with articles, 50% of these have an author/date conflict between genus and species article, and all that have common names have the wrong citation style.

Do you want this to proliferate? Anyone who says "yes" is herewith kindly asked to go ahead and fix up this mess. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:37, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Reply to point 8: There are sources and sources. One must make a distinction between sources made by professional zoologists or botanists and other sources. As stated, even trusted sources sometimes contain mistakes. Then it is up to us, when we find a mistake, to send an email to that source explaining the problem. I have done this many times and have always received a polite response. The problem then was soon taken care of. JoJan (talk) 14:46, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

The scope of the problem prevents this approach. Do you want to check all 447449 taxa currently on WoRMS? (The fact that WoRMS has a very low error rate makes it worse; it is simply a waste of time.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 15:00, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Stemonitis somewhere above in this mess; it shouldn't be Wikipedia editors' jobs to interpret the ICZN (which is frequently open to different interpretations anyway: what is "prevailing usage"?). The difference with Copernicium is that in that case the IUPAC dealt with this specific name; the ICZN deals only with generalities that have to be applied to specific cases. We should follow secondary sources, such as major taxonomic reviews and well-maintained databases like WoRMS. Ucucha (talk) 15:05, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Again: the secondary sources regularly (though inadvertently) violate the Codes of Nomenclature by which we are bound. Hence, they cannot generally qualify as WP:RS; their reliability must theoretically be proven again and again in each and every case. The Codes are also not subject to interpretation with regard to the points discussed here. In fact, they could hardly be more unequivocal. Where exactly is space for subjective interpretation in a statement such as:

The valid name of a taxon is the oldest available name applied to [its type specimen(s)], unless that name has been invalidated or another name is given precedence by any provision of the Code or by any ruling of the Commission.

That is what we are considering here, and it is laid out cleanly and unequivocally. Whether some taxon is considered valid - now THAT is something where we have to turn to secondary sources (if such are available). But we do that already, and nobody proposes changing it. The question here is rather: 1. who first validly gave that name to that taxon and 2. when did that happen? Here, only the primary source is certainly a WP:RS (printer's errors nonwithstanding, but for these we will turn to secondary souces as usual). The problem is that the dating is done somewhat contrary to everyday practice (Art. 21 ICZN Code), and many database or Web list compilers do not know this or do not take enough care (the sqare-brackets problem, perhaps the most common nomenclatorial error on Wikipedia) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 15:32, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

@ Dysmorodrepanis: I check the taxa as I go along. And I only check what is inside my scope of expertise, not the whole database. If we all do the same, then, in the long run, we have a win-win situation. Wikipedia has correct information and the database stands corrected. JoJan (talk) 15:14, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I do the same, but the problem is: no matter how much time we put into maintenance/quality control, it is not sufficient. Back in 2007/2008, you could blindly trust the author/name data on Wikipedia; we hade not that many articles then, and those we had were usually well-known taxa. Today, there are so many articles on little-known taxa which contain so many hard-to-check errors that Wikipedia is close to useless as a nomenclatorial point-of-info. Even if some external source is given, you cannot tell whether it's correct. We are fighting a losing battle here; consequently the system must change, not the way we deal with it. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 15:32, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

(NB: taxonomic databases are not usually secondary nomenclatorial sources. To compile a secondary source, the primary source must be considered directly. Database authors usually do not do this. Rather, they compile the information from check-lists or similar, and they usually do not do error checking either. Consequently, the databases are tertiary sources (or even quaternary sources, if such a distinction is made), and this kind of throws a lot of what is said above out of the window... (we are advised to use tertiary sources with as much restraint as primary sources). The default secondary source in nomenclature is the "first reviser" work, ICZN Code Article 24.2.). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 15:46, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Where exactly is space for subjective interpretation in a statement such as:

The valid name of a taxon is the oldest available name applied to [its type specimen(s)], unless that name has been invalidated or another name is given precedence by any provision of the Code or by any ruling of the Commission.

"Subjective" interpretation isn't the issue. How do you know that a name is the "oldest"? How do you know that it was "available"? This can only be determined by original research in the taxonomic literature. I can only repeat my previous example. You find an original publication by Jones in 1800 which names species X y. This does not tell you that this was the oldest; this does not tell you that the name was available; this does not tell you that the naming was validly done under the relevant code.

Our task is to use the most reliable secondary sources that we can. We can certainly check with primary sources for straightforward mistakes (e.g. I've found transpositions in dates such as "1953" for "1935"), but we shouldn't ourselves be making judgements based on the taxonomic codes (although WP:IAR applies in exceptional cases). Peter coxhead (talk) 16:02, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

You talk about taxon names, and basically everything you say is right. But it completely misses the point, I was talking about author names and description dates. By having an article at all, we need (technically) a secondary souce. This decides all that taxonomic stuff you mention. How the correct way of writing author/date is determined is decided by the ICxN.

(There will be the occasional case of nomenclatorial dispute, the type specimen of Archeopteryx)

Again: taxonomy databases are usually not secondary sources for nomenclatorial questions; They are usually not based on primary sources. Hence, they are tertiary sources, which we cannot use freely either.

As a final comment, the underlying argument Dysmorodrepanis uses is odd: because there are errors in authorities/dates, articles shouldn't normally contain any or should at least drastically reduce the number they contain. I'm rather more concerned about the many more obvious and substantive errors in biology-related articles; so should I propose that we urge editors to stop producing such articles? After all, there are so many that we'll never be able to fix them all... Peter coxhead (talk) 16:08, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

It is not odd, nomenclatorial factoids are not the same as article "bread and butter"; on the contrary, "statistical" minutiae are explicitly forbidden as wikipedia content (Wikipedia:NOTSTATSBOOK). We need to have the information, it is an integral part of the taxon "as a dataset". But we do not need to have it where it increases the total number of errors while adding little other than bulk; Wikipedia standards argue against it and the ICxN does not argue for it either except in the 3 exceptions I drew up above.

Also, it may be worthwhile to leave the colorful bits to new editors, there they can learn their mettle. Us veterans are probably better off doing grunt work, unfortunately - Wikipedia editor growth is slowing, and one reason is that the environment is not as attractive anymore as it was.

---

Two things got mixed up a bit from what I originally intended:

1. The issue at hand (bad data), the "Rationale" above, and the 2 points below it are all different things. The main thing is: I am not the only one who recognizes a problem - how do we solve it?
2. Read #Taxonomy_vs_Classification_vs_Systematics_vs..... above if you haven't done so. The problem is not about secondary sources vs primary sources. Whether a taxon is valid taxonomically (whether we can have an article or not), that is and always will only be up to the secondary sources to decide. If these say "it is valid", we must decide on authorship data, how exactly it is written correctly, which is purely nomenclatorial data, to which external "laws" apply which are quite unequivocal. Here we have primary sources alyways, secondary sources rarely, tertiary sources always.

Here is the problem: a proliferation of doubtfully reliable tertiary sources -- weblists and databases --, when 99.9999999% reliable primary sources exist, but most secondary sources are in fact long monographs and lists printed before 1970. Catalogue of the Birds of the British Museum, that would be an example of a secondary nomenclatorial source. Remember the long "old-fashioned" synonymy lists they have there? Typical for secondary nomenclatorial sources. These were compiled from the primary sources. What the databases and weblists have has been copied half a dozen times or more. Every time, a lapsus may occur.

I have observed that if you take all the "good" tertiary sources now in use for nomenclature on Wikipedia together, you have for perhaps up to 50% (certainly not less than 20%, I'd say) of the taxa more than one version of the nomenclatorial data. One or none of these are correct. All others are lapsus. If WoRMS says one thing and Fauna Europaea another, and IUCN sides with the second, but some museum catalogue sides with the first, and ITIS introduces yet another variant, who are we gonna believe? What if GRIN and ILDIS contradict each other? Go with ILDIS, OK, but still 25% chance you're wrong. It may only be obvious who copied whom, but it will never be obvious who is correct unless we consult the primary source. Citing one tertiary source simply isn't enough often enough. We'd need to check out at least 3; if they agree we're likely in the clear. Some (mainly plant) articles already do so (with plants, I'd guess it's out of necessity.); it slows down browsing and wastes space.

My solution presently is roughly a) collecting/collating most (except homonyms etc) of the data at the smallest number of specific points -- the most specific taxobox or intext list by cutting and then pasting any differences), and/or b) generally eschewing tertiary sources for the primary source (secondary in case of amendations to the original nomens) for taxon authorship data -- since in any case of dispute we need to turn to the primary data anyway, we may just as well use it as the first source to check out, as well as b1) generally having no citations for author/date

Anyone perchance got time to read through Stemmatics? Documentary phlogenetics, getting a few ideas from there might help us.

What I would really like to propose:

Considering we basically agree that there might be a problem requiring fixing, we should do an improv study. Science can be "hard" or "soft", and there is also pseudoscience ;-)

1. Hard: Take random selection of perhaps 200 or more taxon articles (i.e. taxobox template present). Take their parent taxon articles. Take the parent taxon articles of those. If the articles selected are not highest-rank (species/subspecies), do the same one step downwards. Compare authorship data, note any discrepancies. Half a year later, do the survey again, for a) the original sample of articles and b) a new random sample. Compare results.
2. Soft: Routinely do such comparisons one taxonomic level up/down, whenever you do major edits on taxon articles. Note down how many % discrepancies. Half a year later, compare collected data.
3. Pseudo: Take two random 18th-century nomenclatorial works, e.g. Systema 12th ed. Take all species described therein which are on Wikipedia. In the species taxoboxes and on any genus lists where authorship data is given, count parentheses errors -- for the Systema, "Linnaeus, 1766" where it should be "(Linnaeus, 1766)" (the reverse probably does not occur) or "L." where it should be "(L.) [reviser]". Also, count date errors -- "1766" where it should be "1767" (the reverse probably does not occur either). Wait half a year, repeat, compare.

OK. Thanks for your attention.

---

Now, any volunteers to fix Cochranella? It very much illustrates all the points I have brought up.

We apparently have 3 databases in there now: IUCN (the species articles), another one at the initial version of the genus article -- perhaps ITIS (I moved the data from genus to species long ago, hence the "verification needed"s at many species already), plus, apparently, a third (someone restored author/dates at the genus list, but some "verification needed" species do not disagree with the new list. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:46, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Biota vs species

There has been a discussion on using the term "biota" as opposed to "species". Has this been resolved? Category:Endangered species has a mish-mash of "endangered species" and "endangered biota". -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:32, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Where have this been discussed? Petter Bøckman (talk) 06:37, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

In this particular instance (i.e. the context of "endangered") the issue is that a small proportion of the taxa listed as endangered are subspecies, not species, so "endangered species" isn't right as a category name. Why "endangered biota" is better than "endangered taxa" isn't clear to me. It would certainly be better to be consistent throughout the categories of endangered groups. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:31, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Got the point. I would use "groups" or "taxa", particularly since the term "Biota" already has an established meaning in biology. Petter Bøckman (talk) 11:04, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

"Endangered species" is the commonly used term. On the principle of least surprise it should be used instead of "endangered biota", even though the latter may be a more accurate description. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:17, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I suppose "endangered biota" is the proper term when a whole eco-system is under threat. At least in ecology, biota is the sum total of all organisms in the system under discussion. I have never heard it used for single species. Petter Bøckman (talk) 22:24, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I think we can all agree that "endangered biota" isn't right. I understand Alan's point but on the other hand he has rightly argued for precision and accuracy in categorization and I'd be unhappy to have to categorize an endangered subspecies as [[Category:Endangered species]]. Because laypeople use "species" incorrectly and therefore wouldn't be surprised isn't a wholly convincing reason for us to do so, at least in my view. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:41, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

A further note on sources

1. Why taxonomic databases are (mostly) tertiary sources for nomenclature, but may be legitimate secondary sources for taxonomy: As per Markku Savela (emphasis changed):

Taxonomic referencing
Don't do it! Or, if you do, keep in mind that this site is a collection of names (taxa). The status or ranking of a specific taxon in this site should not be referenced. This site does not contain orignal taxonomic information or opinions. Everthing is based on published literature or other information given to me.

But many of us (including myself) use this site as a mainstay ref. For WoRMS, basically the same disclaimer (in Savela's original emphasis, see link) holds true -- its taxonomic structure as is is highly original research (emphasis added):

As a user or developer you can use the WoRMS webservice to feed your own application with standard WoRMS taxonomy.

The same holds true for Fauna Europaea and ABRS: editors have considerable taxonomic leeway leafwards in the tree.

Theritas and others

Now, consider for example Theritas. Second section from bottom is the list of main references. You will note that these range from primary/secondary (BCA, Hemming etc) to "beyond tertiary" (Smart). FE, ABRS, WoRMS etc use more and less tertiary sources, but it is obvious that they are mostly built on previously-published (secondary) lists, not on doing species by species from the primary literature.

2. Primary vs tertiary sources We should use both with restraint. While this is remembered for primary sources (or at least it is claimed, the reality is different), it is less openly remembered for tertiary sources, which are defined as

publications such as encyclopedias and other compendia that summarize primary and secondary sources.

This includes most taxonomic databases. Compare:

Everthing is based on published literature or other information given to me.

There is, however, WP:SCHOLARSHIP. A peer-reviewed publication in a journal that is not disreputable (no exact definition, but "you know it when you see it") is for WP purposes considered RS until proven otherwise. While 1' and 3' sources are acceptable under some circumstances (WP:NOR etc), they better be scholarly + peer-reviewed. Luckily, most nomenclatorial acts fall into this category, as do most taxonomic acts. The former are by definition 1' sources, the others may be anything but are mostly 3' sources these days (a taxon is proposed 1', it is vetted 2', it is accepted or rejected 3').

My remarks are not concerned with using 3' sources for taxonomy. This is fine enough (though I prefer secondary peer-revewed). It is about the SOP using 3' sources to determine the correct author/date citation of the nomen, and even use them as inline ref, whereas the 1' source is perfectly legitimate for this purpose because as a quasi-verbatim citation no OR is involved.

I should perhaps phrased it differently: "Introduce orig. descr. as the standard inline ref for taxobox author/date info".

3. Regarding use of primary sources. Some opt for a very restrictive policy here. However, this would mean speedy-deleting most of Category:Fossil taxa described in 2011 and uber pissing off WP:PAL and WP:DINO. Whether these articles, though by necessity relying on a single 1' source, violate WP:SCHOLARSHIP, WP:PSTS, WP:RS, WP:NOR etc in any way whatsoever is very much arguable, I'd argue. As a rule, these articles only state with certainty what is certainly known, and any statements beyond are habitually disclaimered ("may, include, at least, requires further research, still undetermined"...), and aim to provide secondary sources indirectly pertinent to the matter (e.g. info in the lagerstätte) and thus fulfil the #1 rule of WP:V: WP:CHALLENGE. (Theoretically, not using "is a proposed [species, genus...]..." violates NOR though. This is in fact significant when it comes to nomenclatorial disputes.)

4. Restated for clarity: my remarks above are concerned with the proliferation of internal nomenclatorial inconsistencies. For taxonomy, secondary sources are usually available (but see above).

Go back to the Theritas example above. Compare:

• Theritas paupera (C. & R. Felder, 1865)
• Theritas danaus (C. & R. Felder, [1865])

How to determine which is correct by any other way than consulting the 1' source and applying the ICxN rules? I bet you we will find at least 1, probably 2 more variants even in the usually-reliable databases, if any exist on this genus. For the Novara expedition, we might actually get a secondary source (scholarly, non-peer-reviewed, e.g. zoonomen). For less monumental 1' sources this is not the case. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:07, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't know what kind of discussion this is supposed to engender, but it reads like a setting-out of one person's opinion, rather than an attempt to develop a consensus. I don't wish to sound mean, but essays such as this probably belong in user-space, not here. --Stemonitis (talk) 20:19, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Well I think that the fact that we have a large number of genus pages where species are listed with author/date info and no parentheses, yet were describes before the genus -- whereas we had few of these 2 years ago -or so -, is indicative of a general quality-control problem and declining editorial standards of WP:TOL, and would like to know if anyone else has noted. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:31, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I see. I wouldn't have guessed that from your previous post. Do you have anything beyond anecdotal evidence that things are getting worse? Can you establish who is doing it, and where the errors are coming from? It would be good to discuss the actual problem, rather than trying to deal with it through general assertions about primary and secondary references, and so on. --Stemonitis (talk) 21:47, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I, too, have noticed no such increase in author citation errors. In fact, I think our collective efforts have only served to make it much more reliable, one edit at a time. Again, I don't think this a special case with respect to author citations. Existing guidelines and policies cover these subjects. If you notice errors, WP:SOFIXIT. If you think (and can present relevant examples) that a specific database is more error prone than others, we can discuss a suggestion to not use that database. Even then, though, we could just write a short guideline that says editors should try to verify author citations for that taxon in multiple reliable sources, but again I fail to see how this is different or more important than any other information in an article. I'd also like to note that the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. The databases and other reliable sources used to obtain data on author citations for taxa reach that threshold. I see no problem. Rkitko ^(talk) 22:23, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:HighBeam

Wikipedia:HighBeam describes a limited opportunity for Wikipedia editors to have access to HighBeam Research.
—Wavelength (talk) 16:11, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Muntiacinae and Cervinae

Hello,

The article muntjac states that the subfamily of the genus Muntiacus is Cervinae, while Indian muntjac says that it is Muntiacinae. Apparently, both have been used; see [6]. Which one are we going to go with, though? It is now inconsistent across articles. InverseHypercube (talk) 07:03, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Mammal Species of the World explains: "Muntiacini generally has been regarded as a subfamily (Haltenorth, 1963) and has usually been attributed to Pocock, 1923, Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1923:207; treated as a full family by Groves and Grubb (1990); relegated to tribal status in Cervinae, by Groves and Grubb (1987) and Grubb (2000b) supported by evidence in Kraus and Miyamoto (1991)." --Stemonitis (talk) 07:12, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah, okay. Thank you. I'll change all the muntjac articles to use this classification. InverseHypercube (talk) 15:37, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Article titles for monotypic taxa

Hello everyone. I wanted to ask whether the Tree of Life project has an agreed-upon convention as to which name to use as the title of an article about a monotypic taxon? For example, do we use the binomial name of the species as the title of an article about a monotypic genus? Or do we use the name of the genus as the title? Thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 15:58, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

We use the genus, unless that title's ambiguous. If the genus name is ambiguous (e.g. "Gregoria"), we use the binomen (e.g. Gregoria fenestrata), unless that is also ambiguous (rare, but it could happen). --Stemonitis (talk) 16:04, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Teleostomi

Please see Template talk:Taxonomy/Teleostomi#Skipping Eugnathostomata where we are discussing how to handle the display of Eugnathostomata in the automatic taxobox. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 01:31, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Hydroid

It's sort of an article. Sort of a dab page. Could someone please look at it and push it one way or the other? Many thanks. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:47, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Darwin was Nearly Right

We all know that taxonomy is a 'bag of worms' and that a species may be (and often is) classified with virtually equal accuracy from a dozen different perspectives. Ever stopped to wonder why?

I thought you might be interested in a recent paper by Eugene McCarthy http://www.macroevolution.net/support-files/forms_of_life.pdf

Darwin was spot on with natural selection, and so very close on many occasions to the real source of genetic variation. This approach by McCarthy unlocks the last riddle - Saltation - which plagued Darwin's theory.

Unfortunately, it demonstrates that the other half of the 'Tree of Life' is missing - there is now a huge amount of work to be done to identify 'the other half' and start to put in place all the crossing links.

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks - Derek

DerekSmith (talk) 12:47, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

There's a "brief" synopsis here for those of us who are TLDR-challenged. AFAICT, he is basically restating the well-known genetics behind punctuated equilibrium, although I'm not sure he realizes that. He's not the first to challenge the gradualism of Darwin's views, and if investigators continue to ignore the older literature, he won't be the last.--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:16, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

It seems to start off OK (e.g. what on a cursory skim looks like a decent review of hybridisation), but gets worse (e.g. armadillos are descended from ankylosaurs, and whales from mososaurs). Lavateraguy (talk) 16:20, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I'm afraid it gets solidly into very shaky ground there. When you put their plates flat on their backs, stegosaurs look kind of like pangolins, so pangolins must be surviving stegosaurs—never mind the fact that stegosaur plates are bony, while pangolin ones are epidermal (quite apart from the numerous other features that identify one group as mammalian, the other as archosaurian). And I wonder what made him think that multituberculate and rodent dentitions are similar. Ucucha (talk) 17:51, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

@Ucucha - you are thinking in classical Neo-Darwinian linear evolutionary terms with this response - with hybridisation characteristics of each parent are shared / mixed up making it entirely possible for bone plates to become epidermal in the hybrid. We don't understand the rules of hybridisation yet - when do hybrids come out half and half, when do they come out blends, but the old way of thinking stands in the way of 'seeing' what seems to be in front of our noses. DerekSmith (talk) 20:16, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

If we don't understand the rules of hybridization after all this time, we must not understand much of anything. Don't get me wrong; I even go looking for hybrids. But there's no revolutionary new science here.--Curtis Clark (talk) 01:53, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, Multituberculata does say "multituberculates had a cranial and dental anatomy similar to rodents" ...

I'd guess that he doesn't know anatomy and palaeontology, so there's nothing to stop him running with impressionistic similarities. The lack of DNA from fossil organisms shields his conjectures from DNA testing to a degree, but I expect that sequence data doesn't match the expectations of his conjectures. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:09, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Snakes are descended from annelids! —innotata 19:59, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Some of the suggestions may well to turn out to be wrong, but what of the principle that every 'species' did not slowly evolved through gradual mutation, but sprang into (geologically) instant existance through hybridisation of two compatable parents. It happens frequently in ducks and fish, sometimes the parents are driven out because of the hybrid vigor and environmental suitability of the hybrids and a new species is born. Does this not explain the extreme problems often encountered in taxonomy - each 'species' does not have one parent, but two, and there are no 'missing intermediary fossils' because there were none. DerekSmith (talk) 18:52, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

The simple answer is "no". Some species arose by hybridisation (it's quite common in plants), but DNA sequence data generally supports a dichotomising tree of descent. If wide hybridisation was a common occurrence it would show up as more horizontal tranfer in genomes than is seen. (BTW, can you give even one example in ducks - ducks, geese and swans hybridise readily, but I'm not aware that this has resulted in a new hybridogenetic species. Outside ducks, there is an example in Passer.) Lavateraguy (talk) 19:12, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Interspecific hybrids are fairly common, intergeneric hybrids are generally rare, but common in a few groups (e.g. orchids, cacti, pome fruits, water fowl, wild fowl) and not all that rare in general in birds and plants, and interfamilial hybrids very scarce (all that I recall are among wild fowl); I get the impression that he is talking about rather wider hybridisation. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:12, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

There's rather shaky grounds to say even the Italian Sparrow or Mariana Mallard are hybridogenetic. Genera and families are of course arbitrary, but I doubt there's any interfamilial hybridisation under modern taxonomies (there are only two families of wildfowl, Magpie Geese and everything else). —innotata 19:59, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

(By wild fowl I meant Galliformes.) IIRC, there are hybrids between Cracidae and Phasianidae. There are also hybrids between Numididae and Phasianidae Lavateraguy (talk) 20:10, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I'm remembering the galliforms now, though don't know how they fall in newer classifications. (Wildfowl is the British term for waterfowl, galliforms are called landfowl or gamefowl.) —innotata 20:18, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

[ec] When I still did research, I studied hybrid speciation in plants. One of the consequences of genetics is that hybrid species ordinarily share apomorphies of both parents. In plant groups with a fair amount of hybrid speciation, divergent speciation (as measured by patterns of apomorphies) greatly outweighs hybrid speciation (in the genus I studied, Encelia, only two of over a dozen species had well-substantiated hybrid origins. (These were diploid species, not alloploids.)

I'm responding quickly here, but I can look up studies that state that the vast majority of angiosperms (and therefore the vast majority of plants) are of hybrid origin. So a genus having just two members of hybrid origin does not strike me as a plant group "with a fair amount of hybrid speciation." But, of course, the mere fact that the other members of Encelia were not shown to be of hybrid origin does not mean they aren't. Nor does it mean that they are of gradual, nonhybrid origin. The tendency, all too often, I find, is to ASSUME gradual origins until hybrid origins are firmly demonstrated. In the present context, that's a real bias. Koolokamba (talk) 17:25, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

On the other hand, any character state distribution can be explained by hybridization events; i.e., hybridization cannot be falsified through phylogenetic analysis. In the final edition of Plant Speciation, Verne Grant made the statement that hybridization in flowering plants was so pervasive that we would never figure out their phylogeny. It didn't turn out that way.--Curtis Clark (talk) 19:30, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Was that before DNA sequencing became technically and economically feasible? Lavateraguy (talk) 20:10, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

In my specific case, we found chimeric ITS sequences and shared RAPD markers. But the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group demonstrates that congruent molecular and morphological trees are reasonably common.--Curtis Clark (talk) 01:50, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

The intended target of my question was the statement made by Verne Grant. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:49, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Any character state can be explained, that is, a phylogeny can be constructed, also under the assumption that no hybridization has occurred. But that doesn't make the explanation true. So, yes, "hybridization cannot be falsified through phylogenetic analysis," if by phylogenetic analysis you mean "construction of a phylogeny." But if you look at the situation historically, you do see a pervasive phenomenon across a broad range of taxa: inconsistent phylogenies have been produced by different research groups when different sets of traits/genes were used as a basis of comparison. In this respect, phylogenetic analysis speaks clearly for a pervasive role of hybridization in evolution. And, I think it's fair to say that it also suggests that the current, most popular angiosperm phylogeny is but the latest most popular angiosperm phylogeny. There have been many others, in many ways inconsistent with the current one, and if we keep thinking the same way, imagining a true tree must exists when everything is actually reticulate, this historical trend will, no doubt, continue. Before long we'll have another most popular angiosperm phylogeny. But isn't that just a bit sisyphean? Looking at things historically, people engaged in the production of phylogenies have always claimed that their own phylogenies are valid and satisfactory (how could they not?), and yet in each case subsequent workers using new data sets come up with new, supposedly more accurate phylogenies. But the mere continuation of debate here suggests that different data sets are generating different phylogenies (the expectation under the hypothesis that hybridization is rampant). I think this is what McCarthy is arguing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Koolokamba (talk • contribs) 17:39, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

McCarthy's first book extensively covers avian hybrids http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/LifeSciences/VertebrateZoology/Ornithology/?view=usa&ci=9780195183238 I have not read it, so I cannot offer any examples to answer your question, but the summary claims thousands of hybrid species. DerekSmith (talk) 20:05, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Didn't know he was the same person. I've read it (and cited it on Wikipedia), and don't remember any suggestion of large-scale hybrid descent in its discussion or from its contents. —innotata 20:18, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

You've misinterpreted it. It claims (and I believe it) hybrids with 4,000 different species parentages. A hybrid (nothospecies) is not the same as the species. For example ligers and tigons, reciprocal crosses between Panthera leo and Panthera tigris are not (yet, and probably will never be) a hybridogenetic species.

If you were to read the book you'd find that something like 90% of those pairings represent intrageneric hybrids (between a natural tendency to broader hybridisation, taxonomic biases, and human intervention birds have a relatively high rate of intergeneric hybridisation).

For an accessible database of avian hybrids see here Lavateraguy (talk) 20:20, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, my mistake, as I said, I had not read the book and misread the summary, indeed, it says thousands of hybrids, not species. Would it be reasonable to think though, that, in the fullness of time, some of those hybrids might establish themselves as species? Wouldn't this be a demonstration of the McCarthy proposal? DerekSmith (talk) 21:02, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for posting it, hadn't seen it before. Before anybody says it supports McCarthy's claims, note that the site doesn't distinguish between copulation and actual (much less fertile) hybrids—it's a database of sources to look at. —innotata 20:28, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

There are two parts to the proposal, first that hybridisation creates the instant genetic difversity, then, second, Stabilisation Theory under natural selection fixes the genetic makeup and increases fertility. Massively reduced fertility is initially compensated for by improved fitness. DerekSmith (talk) 21:07, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Just to be fair to McCarthy, guys, can any one cite even one instance where a species is KNOWN to be of gradual, not hybrid origin? Granted that a very small percentage of species are KNOWN to be of hybrid origin. But these are documented. Koolokamba (talk) 21:25, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Any autopolyploid species. But, if you want to bend over backwards, novel autopolyploid populations may also display genomic shock. Lavateraguy (talk) 22:19, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

As a point of order, McCarthy self-published this "book" on his website, so it's a WP:SPS. I haven't evaluated his resume to see if he's an expert in his field, but one does wonder why he didn't get it published by one of the many academic press operations out there. Rkitko ^(talk) 21:31, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

"Eugene M. McCarthy earned his Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Georgia, where he has conducted research into genomics and hybridization for more than a decade." He has a few papers on LTRs, and on old paper on recombinational speciation. Lavateraguy (talk) 22:17, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm at a library, guys, and I see that in the introduction to his Avian Hybrids book McCarthy lists (pp. 29-30) a lot of birds of hybrid origin that have been treated as species. I also see, in flipping through the book, that most of the crosses seem to be interspecific, not intergeneric as somebody claimed above. 72.152.228.149 (talk) 21:44, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

"intrageneric" rather than "intergeneric" - interspecific includes intergeneric and interfamilial, intrageneric excludes them. Lavateraguy (talk) 21:51, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Seems to me that a hypothesis of pervasive hybridization COULD be falsified: If it were true for the typical set of related organisms, then if distinct gene trees were concordant, it would be consistent with the idea that hybridization was rare. If, on the other hand, different genes regularly generated distinct species phylogenies, then the pervasive hybridization would be supported. I won't name any names, but a GREAT figure in population genetics once told me that the only way to get clean results with phylogenies is to limit the number of markers. In simple terms, his advice was don't look at too many genes or you'll get conflicting results and you won't be able to publish. 72.152.228.149 (talk) 22:01, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

In repsonse to Genomic Shock's comment above: An autopolyploid is the product of a spontaneous chromosome doubling that generally occurs in ONE generation--not a very good example of gradual origin if you ask me. Actually, I see autopolyploidy is one of the stabilization processes that McCarthy mentions on his site. Koolokamba (talk) 22:13, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I did a site search of McCarthy's site for the term "autopolyploid" and on one page he writes this: "Many supposed autopolyploid [sic] are actually derived from hybridization, but are not recognized as such due to the official taxonomic treatment of the hybridizing forms. That is, they are products of hybridization between forms that are distinct, but treated as conspecific. Suomalainen et al. (1987: 100) state that polyploid vertebrates of known origin have generally 'proven either to be species hybrids or hybrids between different cytological races [i.e., different chromosets] of a single species.' " Koolokamba (talk) 22:21, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

What you meant by gradual was unclear, especially as you opposed it to hybrid. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:45, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Stebbins called these "segmental allopolyploids" in plants. Many botanists dont' regard strict autopolyploidy as a means of speciation, since there is continued gene flow into the polyploids through non-reduced gametes.--Curtis Clark (talk) 01:45, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Taking the comment above "GREAT figure in population genetics once told me that the only way to get clean results with phylogenies is to limit the number of markers. In simple terms, his advice was don't look at too many genes or you'll get conflicting results and you won't be able to publish. 72.152.228.149 (talk)" -- isn't this true across the board? and if so, does this not directly imply that hybridisation is behind the vast majority of species origins? And if this is true, then is there not a huge amount of taxanomic work to be done to identify the other hybridisation parent for each of these hybridisation generated species? The 'simple' linear 'Tree of Life' then takes on the form of a genealogical structure with most of the crosses being quite close, but some conceivably quite distant if the Hybridisation Zone was stable and the hybridisation compatability high enough. DerekSmith (talk) 12:25, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Common descent with dichotomising speciation results in nested hierarchies inferred from different data sets being correlated - not identical. It's generally better to improve taxon sampling that to throw base pairs at a taxonomy - more loci means more opportunities to find a long branch artefact. On a smaller scale, differential fixation of ancestral polymorphisms results in differences between the trees inferred from different loci.

Even if you got more greatly divergent trees this wouldn't imply that hybridisation was behind the vast majority of species origins - if one species in 10 resulted from hybridisation between divergent parents that would be enough to mess up the trees. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:42, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

This reasoning begs the question. If descent truly were strictly dichotomous, then it would be fine to talk about correlated data sets. However, given the two hypotheses we are considering (A: descent is dichotomous and hybridization so rare it can be ignored; and B: descent is reticulate and hybridization is pervasive) any contradictory data that reduces the correlation is actually evidence for hybridization and cannot be merely discounted (as it usually, and reasonably, is under the assumption that hybridization is rare). The comment about differential fixation reflects the same bias: it assumes that the differences are due to differential fixation when they might just as well be evidence of hybridization.DerekSmith (talk) 16:33, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

So, this is a nice discussion, but is there any point to it? Are you suggesting improvements to an existing article or trying to gain support for a policy or guideline, or alert other editors to an existing issue in an article? Those are the typical functions of a Wikipedia talk page. All I see here is so far is a decent discussion of the article you posted, its merits, and the ideas within that article. I see no connection to how it is to be used on Wikipedia. There are better venues to continue that discussion as Wikipedia is not a forum. Have any specific proposals on what you want to see done? Or was this just a general "for your interest" post? If the latter, I suggest wrapping up the conversation. What is clear from this discussion is that many of our articles on phylogenetic topics could use improvement. For example, at present incomplete lineage sorting currently redirects to coalescent theory. Rkitko ^(talk) 17:26, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Seems to me there's a VERY BIG POINT. This discussion has a direct bearing on how the "tree of life" should be treated in this article: Is it (i.e., the tree of life) a valid notion or not? If it probably isn't, SURELY that should be at least mentioned in the article. Likewise, if there is disagreement concerning its validity, that should be mentioned, too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Koolokamba (talk • contribs) 18:47, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Good point Rkitko, I was starting to worry that this discussion was getting quite large. Is there any point to it? Again good question. From the discussions so far posted, it seems that there is a significant probability that the two processes proposed by McCarthy are substantiated, and that they answer the Saltation problem as yet unanswered by Neo-Darwinism. Consequently the subject of this page - WikiProject Tree of Life will be found to be sadly lacking in describing the lineage of species. Had McCarthy's book been trashed by the expert editors here present, that would have been the end of it, but it wasn't, in fact some posters brought forward supportive examples. So rather than asking is there a point to the discussion, it would perhaps be more pertinent to ask - how are the editors going to correct the present rendition of this page to adapt to new science? DerekSmith (talk) 18:57, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

The claim that in a high proportion of cases speciation in eukaryotes proceeds via hybridization is an extraordinary one and would require extraordinarily good evidence. It's at odds with the vast body of molecular phylogenetic data accumulated since the mid-1990s and seems to be sourceable to a single self-published book. Classic fringe science as far as I can see. So there is at present no need to make any changes. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:19, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Cite your sources, please, not your opinions. "Vast body" says nothing. And please keep in mind it's not a "claim." It's a hypothesis with a great deal of empirical support. Angiosperms, for example, are eukaryotes, and, as almost any biologist must have heard by now, most angiosperms are of hybrid origin. Koolokamba (talk) 19:40, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, please. Let's avoid ad hominem arguments. Sylvia 1024 (talk) 21:03, 16 June 2012 (UTC)