Talk:Porcupine ray

Porcupine ray has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
May 12, 2011	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on June 7, 2009.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that although classified as a stingray, the porcupine ray (pictured) does not have a stinging spine on its tail?

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Porcupine ray/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:59, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'll begin review now. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:59, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

~~30 m (98 ft)~~ ~~- better to say 100 ft here.~~

Fixed.

Aha, nice to see the "-1" parameter - will remember it for next time....Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

~~asperrimus~~ ~~is actually Latin superlative meaning "roughest" or "very rough"...but don't sweat it if we can't get a reference stating that (i.e. only go in if ref, otherwise don't lose sleep over it)~~

The entire original description is in Latin, so would that represent a translation and thus not OR?

hmmm, I guess luckily the fact that it is a superlative is obvious and uncontroversial to anyone who's studied Latin, so I think we're fine on this one. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

~~There may be more than one species of porcupine ray, as is currently recognized~~ ~~- whoa, any further info in the source to add as to why this is thought so? Can it be added?~~

This one's tricky. The sentence is a one-off mention in Smiths' Sea Fishes. There is a species Urogymnus laevior described by Annandale in 1909, but there are only two modern sources that even mention it: Michael (1993) assumes it's a second species, and it appears in a 2002 single checklist of Thai elasmobranchs. The vast majority of literature doesn't acknowledge it, nor does it appear as either a valid species or a synonym in FishBase or other databases. I debated what to do about this, because there aren't any sources that talk about the taxonomic validity of U. laevior at all. I ended up leaving it out for now. -- Yzx (talk) 22:22, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay - I think how you've phrased it is the most accurate way to have done so with the sources at hand. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

~~Any other information on why they are in their own genus would be good to add (just the lack of a stinging tail?)~~

I don't have Müller and Henle's publication where they proposed Gymnura, but that was probably a factor.

Ok you do what you can do. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwsie looking good. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:28, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Let me know of further issues. -- Yzx (talk) 22:22, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

1. Well written?:

Prose quality:

Manual of Style compliance:

2. Factually accurate and verifiable?:

References to sources:

Citations to reliable sources, where required:

No original research:

3. Broad in coverage?:

Major aspects:

Focused:

4. Reflects a neutral point of view?:

Fair representation without bias:

5. Reasonably stable?

No edit wars, etc. (Vandalism does not count against GA):

6. Illustrated by images, when possible and appropriate?:

Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

Overall:

Pass or Fail:

Thanks for the review. -- Yzx (talk) 06:15, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed merge with Raja africana

Raja africana is noted as a synonym at Porcupine ray. It is a regional sub-variant, without defined boundary or morphology from other porcupine rays. If there is any differentiating information (none in the current version) then it should be introduced at the parent article. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:02, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Two minutes between proposed merge and actual merge doesn't leave much room for discussion. Anyhow, I've reinstated the page, as it seems the merge was based on a misunderstanding. It is an entirely separate species, but the problem is the nomenclature, as two separate authorities have used the name Raja africana: First in 1801 where Bloch & Schneider used it to describe a population later considered a synonym of the porcupine ray. Almost two centuries later, Capapé, evidently unaware that someone already had used this name many years earlier, described a new species of skate as Raja africana. Two entirely separate species (not even in the same family), but only one name. Capapé's name is a homonym, but FishBase (the WP:FISH de facto species authority) still use it, although with reservations because of the problems with its nomenclature. Catalog of Fishes, Last et al. in Rays of the World (2016), Weigmann in Annotated checklist of the living sharks, batoids and chimaeras (Chondrichthyes) of the world, with a focus on biogeographical diversity (2016) and most other recent authorities have taken the same approach. A secondary problem is the validity of Capapé's species, but a future review is necessary to resolve that matter. I've added a small note to the wiki article explaining the problems. RN1970 (talk) 00:59, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]