Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles

Several articles need attention...

Hello!

I did some editing on the page of king cobra and venomous snakes, adding some information and removing some old contents. I had tried to put my suggestions on the talk page of the king cobra article before I started my editing. However, no one gave any response. I'm not sure if my edition is appropriate so I would like to have your comments here so that I can ensure the quality of the articles. Please have a look at those pages if you have time.

Thanks a lot !

(User:Toxic Walker) (talk) (UTC)

Amphibian taxonomy

As an exercise I wrote a little python script which checks whether the scientific name used in ambhibian species articles is valid according to Ambhibian Species of the World. As a starting point I took all 7453 articles in Category:Amphibians and subcategories from catscan. I then tried to figure out binomial name from infobox ({{Taxobox}}, {{Speciesbox}}, {{Automatic taxobox}}); there were some parsing errors here and there, but overall I think it worked pretty well. Here's the results:

• 4767 species articles have valid binomial names according to ASW 5.6
• 1401 nonvalid binomial names. ASW considers 1211 of them as synonyms. The rest of them are mostly genera and higher taxa articles where the script did't parse the infobox correctly, but there is also e.g. Lithobates areolata which ASW doesn't recognise as synonym (ASW gives L. areolatus as valid).

• some species have two articles: an older polbotian stubs and a newer article created by an editor. For example, Rana garritor and Hylarana garritor.

• 1070 articles which have an infobox, but where the script failed to find binomial name. Vast majority of these are about genera and higher taxa, but there are also some subspecies, fossils and few missparsings, too.
• 215 articles had none of the three infoboxes. For example Kermit the frog, Jar Jar Binks, lists of ambhibians of various places etc.

ASW recognises 7044 valid species. 7044 - 4767 = 2277 missing species, but most of them are listed among the 1211 above. Probably around 1000 or so missing species.

I'm not a taxonomist, so I have no idea whether ASW is considered as a good reference or not. At the very least the "valid" taxa (according to ASW) should be redirects; majority of them are redlinks at the moment. Also there are at least 70 articles listed under the frogs Spanish common name, e.g. Rana-chirriadora Del Nevado De Colima, Ranita Marsupial Pigmea. Here's a small snippet from the list of 1211 "nonvalid" pages I got:

wp page	wp binomial name	valid name from ASW	ASW
Colorado River toad	Bufo alvarius	Incilius alvarius	[1]
Black toad	Bufo exsul	Anaxyrus exsul	[2]
European green toad	Bufo viridis	Bufotes viridis	[3]
American toad	Bufo americanus	Anaxyrus americanus	[4]
Pickerel frog	Rana palustris	Lithobates palustris	[5]
Paddletail newt	Pachytriton labiatus	Paramesotriton labiatus	[6]
Houston toad	Bufo houstonensis	Anaxyrus houstonensis	[7]
Physalaemus nattereri	Physalaemus nattereri	Eupemphix nattereri	[8]
Arroyo toad	Bufo californicus	Anaxyrus californicus	[9]
Red-spotted toad	Bufo punctatus	Anaxyrus punctatus	[10]
Wyoming toad	Bufo baxteri	Anaxyrus baxteri	[11]
Florida bog frog	Rana okaloosae	Lithobates okaloosae	[12]
Bufo asper	Bufo asper	Phrynoidis aspera	[13]
Rococo toad	Chaunus schneideri	Rhinella schneideri	[14]
Chaunus chavin	Chaunus chavin	Rhinella chavin	[15]
Large-crested toad	Bufo cristatus	Incilius cristatus	[16]

The full table is too long to dump on this page.

So, the question is whether the pages should be moved and articles edited accordingly, or simply create redirects. As an IP, I cannot go on a moving or creation spree... 88.148.249.186 (talk) 08:56, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

This is a good initiative. It is a bit of a disgrace that "important" groups like Ranidae and Bufonidae are so outdated when it comes to taxonomy.

ASW is the authoritative source of taxonomy for this project (according to our project page), so to me it is clear that we should aim at not lagging much behind. IUCN is largely following it, and AmphibiaWeb is not much different either. Currently we are several years behind for many groups with respect to any of these sources. As the solution, I think the way to go is to move and edit articles accordingly (ideally using the automatic taxobox system to ease future maintenance), instead of creating a patchwork of redirects (could be used for taxa where taxonomy is particularly volatile). The challenge is that it is a lot of work. In some cases the job needs to start from the family level. Care is needed that pages do not get orphaned and that duplicates are not accidentally created. Having been updating Rhacophoridae and Megophryidae, I can assure that even a minimal update per article amounts to a good amount of work.

As a first step, I would suggest putting the list as a sub-page to the project page. It would be good to get better idea where the biggest challenges are. Few cases are easy, like the articles with Spanish names that should be moved to their scientific names (yes, I am against using common names except for few well-known species). Otherwise, it probably is best if people could "adopt" a group, so as to avoid orphaning pages and keeping some uniformity. However, a sad truth is that there are not many people active in this project, so all this will take time. I do not know how to increase participation in this work. Another point to consider is that we are hopefully not so far from ASW 5.7.

Why do you not want to register? I see that you have already been doing a lot of good work! I have nothing against good IP editors, but it is usually more reassuring to see changes by registered editors. Micromesistius (talk) 20:47, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

OK, the full list is Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles/Amphibian taxonomy. I can only create talk pages, so feel free to move it if you like. Unfortunately it's not in alphabetical or taxonomical order, but refreshing the list is fairly easy - I actually did that this evening.

Like you said, some of these are easy, like getting rid of Spanish names (there are more of them still, but I can't find them automatically). Some taxa are now considered junior synonyms; if they are bot-created one can simply redirect them. It might be possible to get a bot to do part of the job, but it needs to be a pretty clever bot... otherwise it might leave another mess to fix. For higher taxa, I suppose {{Anura}} is more or less accurate representation of the system in use in Wikipedia. It lists ~33 families, but ASW gives 54. I have no idea how widely accepted ASW families are; (re)writing them is a lot of work.

I actually like editing as an IP more than I liked editing with account. I used to be fairly active, but that was several years ago. 88.148.249.186 (talk) 20:47, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Great work, many thanks! I think it is fine where it is, but I will add a link to the main page.

Many of Spanish names belong to taxa where the "correct" genus-level setting is lacking, so they are more laborious than I thought. In contrast, junior synonyms are quick and easy to handle, so I would not worry too much about creating a bot. Perhaps the biggest chunk of work is with South American frogs. My impression is that there also the taxonomy is less settled. Micromesistius (talk) 13:05, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I opened a huge move request at Talk:Eleutherodactylus actinolaimus; renaming large number of pages might be considered controversial, and more importantly, the requested move might draw some new eyes (and hands) here. 88.148.249.186 (talk) 17:16, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

The move request noted above was carried out by me, but the cleanup after that move—fixing the article content— is not something I can even attempt without input from subject matter experts. It would be great if someone here could weigh in at Talk:Pristimantis actinolaimus#Cleaning up after the move. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:41, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Is it too much trouble to get a bot to do the clean-up? Manual clean-up would be daunting and not the best use of human editor time. It would also be great to have the list of discrepancies (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles/Amphibian taxonomy) updated—much progress has been made! Micromesistius (talk) 11:42, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Norops and Anolis need work

There are currently two articles on the taxon Norops: Norops and Norops (clade). There is also Anolis (the more inclusive taxon) and List of Anolis lizards. I think at the very least the two Norops articles should be merged with each other, and the Phenotypical Comparison section slimmed down to gallery format in the interest of space. The discussion of "Norops" as a clade should be briefly summarized in the article for Anolis as well.--Animalparty-- (talk) 03:57, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Scolecophidia

The past decade had seen a number of changes in Scolecophidia taxonomy. Their does not appear to be any published objections to these changes. A sampling of articles:

• Marin, Julie; et al. (2013). "Hidden species diversity of Australian burrowing snakes (Ramphotyphlops)" (PDF). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 110 (2): 427–441. doi:10.1111/bij.12132. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 December 2013. {{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
• Pyron, Robert Alexander; Burbrink, Frank T. and Wiens, John J. (2013). "A phylogeny and revised classification of Squamata, including 4161 species of lizards and snakes" (PDF). BMC evolutionary biology. 13 (1): 93–145. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-13-93.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
• Broadley, Donald G., and Wallach, Van (2007). "A review of East and Central African species of Letheobia Cope, revived from the synonymy of Rhinotyphlops Fitzinger, with descriptions of five new species (Serpentes: Typhlopidae)". Zootaxa (1515): 31–68.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Abstract
• Broadley, Donald G., and Wallach, Van (2009). "A review of the eastern and southern African blind-snakes (Serpentes: Typhlopidae), excluding Letheobia Cope, with the description of two new genera and a new species" (PDF). Zootaxa (2255): 1–100.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Is there any reason not to update the Wikipedia with these changes? --Bejnar (talk) 22:41, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Well no contrary mention to the articles you itemize on this navigational warning so I think you're good to go regarding that tetrad. --Dracontes (talk) 17:14, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Crocodylus suchus image

This image is labelled as a Nile crocodile on Flickr[17], but has been uploaded to Commons as Crocodylus suchus[18], because the photo was taken in West Africa. Are all West African crocodiles of this type Crocodylus suchus? If not, the identifty of the image is in question. FunkMonk (talk) 09:17, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Based on present evidence, yes, all West African crocodiles are Crocodylus suchus. However, if you look at the source of the image you linked, it wasn't taken anywhere near West Africa. Rather, it was taken in the "African Savanna" exhibit in Honolulu Zoo, and theirs are Nile crocodiles. The only confirmed Crocodylus suchus in the United States, and indeed anywhere in the Americas, is at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. Regardless, "desert crocodile" is a bad name for reasons described in my comment at Template talk:Crocodilia. I have corrected the category for the commons image and requested a file rename. 62.107.218.103 (talk) 17:20, 7 January 2014 (UTC)