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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

List of Salticidae species split

This article is the longest on WP and will be split into A-M and N-Z entries. Please add as you see fit. TrackerTV (CW|Castform|Green Valley) 03:21, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The List of Linyphiidae species was also split. Please let's first consider if that's a good idea before going on like this. --Sarefo 12:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 23:48, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spiders/Undetermined_pictures

Is it dead? Is there any other place where I could request help? -- Drini 23:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Veterinary medicine project

There is now a proposed project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Veterinary Medicine to deal with matters of veterinary medicine, a subject which currently has disproportionately low content in wikipedia. Any wikipedia editors who have an interest in working on content related to the subject are encouraged to indicate as much there. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:09, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Spiders in culture

Does this Wikiproject also tackles the role of spiders in culture (not in pop culture like comics and stuff)? I did one called Spider fighting-----Lenticel 02:32, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Latrodectus negros?

I came across the article Latrodectus negros recently. No mention of L. negros (or the more likely spelling L. nigrus) is made at Latrodectus or elsewhere. Can anyone confirm if this is a real spider, or if it is a hoax? --Stemonitis 10:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism at black widow spider

The article black widow spider has been heavily targeted by vandals; I just reverted about two weeks worth of dubious edits. If someone feels portions of that add value, feel free to put it back. --EngineerScotty 23:23, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Tegenaria domestica

On the article's talk page, I brought up a point about changing the name of the article to Barn funnel weaver spider (currently a redirect), as that is what most of the articles on the spider that don't relate to the Hobo spider or pest control are calling it, including most of the entomology sites like Pennstate. Since finding one of these in my basement, having it identified, and researching it, I have become fascinated with it and have become dedicated to expanding and bettering that article on the amazing creature. DarthGriz98 14:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I personally favor taxonomic names for spider pages. Vernacular names are not very useful in spiders (as opposed to birds, where they are mostly unambiguous). --Sarefo 11:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Calling it Tegenaria domestica (rather than Domestic house spider) would be better yet, less confusion. Right now it's taxonomic name is a redirect to Domestic house spider. DarthGriz98 23:25, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Name of a spider?

Does anyone know the name of a spider that is fuzzy, pretty small and maybe has a white dot that can be found in Oklahoma? I'm assuming they're harmless; I played with them a lot as a kid and -what do you know?- I'm not dead. Faustus Tacitus 05:19, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I too live in Oklahoma and came into contact with this fuzzy white dotted critter this evening! It sent me into an intensive internet researching session! It took a bit of finger grease but I finally found the answer:

The (Bold/Daring) Jumping Spider - Phidippus Audax!

You can find some good photos at the following link under UNIDENTIFIED SPIDERS 2004 (2).

Look for the posting about 1/3rd of the way down under the entry by Sara Louise on 9 June, 2004:

Spider Photos 2004 (2)

There is also some good background info here:

Bold Jumping Spider or Phidippus Audax

Cheers! --MrNet 03:39, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Information on specific spiders

Does anyone here know where I can find information on a specific species of spider? I have already tried Googling the name and reading what little was available. Are there places like specific arachnid laboratories or libraries that I can go to and find reference material? Thanks. -- VegitaU 22:53, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

my experience is that sometimes you can get good information, or hints where to find it, from several arachnologists around the world. However, there's usually some work to do before you find the right person. for example, if you know your species is a jumping spider, i would ask completely different persons than if it's a tarantula; also, sometimes it depends on the region where it was found. so, as a general hint, i would suggest to find out as much as possible about the species, then get a feeling who could be the best person to ask, then just ask. my experience is that arachnologists are very nice people, they will tell you if you should contact somebody else. in the future, such information should be available at the Encyclopedia of Life, but that will take some years to take form. right now, apart from Norman Platnick's World Spider Catalog, which has lots of references you can order in libraries, there's not too many centralized and public sites that i know of. hoped to help, leave me a note if you have any questions. --Sarefo 22:21, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:TOL template

I'm working on a proposal to subsume all the WP:TOL project banners into a single one. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Template union proposal and its talk page. Circeus 19:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Distribution maps!

We need distribution maps! I've little artistic talent, and I'm no spider expert, but is there any way I can help get distribution maps on the articles? The Jade Knight 11:26, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Animals project proposal

I think it's both a pity and somewhat illogical that we have no animal WikiProject despite the fact that there are over 20 projects that are basically its daughters. There are also other projects that could emerge from it in the future, such as one on animal behavior. The project would provide a central place for people from all animal projects to talk, a central set of guidelines for articles on animals and zoology, and an assessment system for articles related to animals. If you are interested in creating such a project please visit Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of life#Animals project to discuss. Richard001 08:49, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

The following projects would come under the parentage of this project:

Hasarius adansoni

This I can't publish since at present it's OR, but if somebody knows a source...
I'm presently taking care of a young female H. adansoni. I think it has not mated yet. However, she laid a clutch of about 6 eggs, at least 1 of which was fertile (it has hatched). I know that parthenogenesis may occur in some mygalomorphs, but I don't know whether it's known from salticids.
FWIW, I have not recorded the incubation time, but the young is now 4 days old, maybe 5, and still feeding on the yolk. Another clutch by a full-grown and fertilized female was about 12-15 eggs (Sarefo has a photo of this). Dysmorodrepanis 13:53, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I got a second clutch of 5 eggs from this female, which has still not mated since. One egg (perhaps two) hatched after quite exactly 4 weeks at an ambient temperature between approx. 23 and 33 °C (wild weather this summer). I lost all young from the first clutch after cleaning, as I accidentally destroyed the hide and the young were attacked by the female thereafter. They apparently feed on the yolk for several weeks after hatching, during which time they keep in the hide and are brooded by the female. The spiderlings are c.1.8 millimeters at hatching. I'll pass them to Sarefo who should be able to get some photos. The clutch is deposited in a separate chamber in the hide; I have a photo of this (it's not very good but it should do) Dysmorodrepanis 11:07, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Information

Hey, can anyone please tell me what types of spiders the following families are (hunting, web-spinning, etc.):

Thanks! --Sam Kay 06:40, 30 August 2007 (MDT)

hey, you got some pretty obscure spider families there :) sorry i don't have the time to check this up for you, but you may check out the respective wiki pages, and the superfamilies, and get some information from there. in the future, the family pages should contain this info, but at the moment i have other things to do, and there are not many people working on the spider pages. cheers :) --Sarefo 19:01, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Huntsman Spiders in NZ?

I am a New Zealander and have never seen a Huntsman in NZ. I've seen plenty in Australia. You might want to check the accuracy of your information as I really do not think we have huntsmen here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.3.72.67 (talk) 03:59, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Just because you can't see a species doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the area. I've lived in PA all my life and find insects and spiders I've never seen before almost every time I go in the field for class. DarthGriz98 04:02, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
You're right, they're much more common in Australia. But there is one species of Sparassidae, Pandercetes peronianus which is the only one from New Zealand, and occurs only there; according to Norman Platnick's World Spider Catalog, which is the ultimate authority. he sometimes does not cite locations that are known, because he only checks published scientific papers on species, but when it's listed there it has been found there. of course, errors exist, but this one is fairly certain. the genus Pandercetes is quite spread, ranging from Vietnam and India to Australia. --Sarefo (talk) 00:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Warning

Perhaps there should be some sort of noticeable warning on at least many of the spider pages. Many such pages have numerous images (many of which are rather detailed) and could cause a significant problem for arachnophobic visitors who accidentally stumble upon them. Medevilenemy (talk) 08:09, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

people with arachnophobia maybe should not visit pages about spiders ;) i once met a woman with a phobia against birds. are we supposed to create warnings on all the bird pages? btw, i work in the zoo on weekends, presenting bird spiders, and have learned that arachnophobia can be cured. spiders are for the very most part very nice animals (to humans, that is), and putting up a warning will imo only enforce the mislead notion that they are dangerous and best to be squashed. --Sarefo (talk) 17:03, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I, too, used to have a phobia of spiders. I think that those who come across these photos accidently can get off the page quickly enough. Maybe there should be an invitation instead, to read up on these wonderful animals and get over their unwarranted fear. They would live a much happier life (I have found) to feel enjoyment upon running across a spider or the image of one, instead of getting sick with fear.

Tarantula Page

I've decided to take on the mess that is the tarantula page. It's too long, full of buried vandalism, unreferenced, etc. I've pulled it into my sandbox to start. I'm putting in the wiki links and cleaning out unnecessary content, fixing style, etc, to start. I'll tackle the references after that. I've only gotten thru the first few sections but I'll keep cranking away. I'm being fairly aggressive so if anyone sees something that should be put back, let me know.

Anyway, the main reason I'm posting here is that the article review comments mention splitting up the body section. I'm not sure what to do there. I'm going to remove the taxonomy section because we have the list already. Should each section on the body just reference a main article? Thoughts? Anyone have a good model page that the tarantula page should be aspiring to? Aboverepine 19:07, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

thanks for cleaning that page up :) actually, there's not too much work being done on the spider pages sadly. i'm doing mostly taxonomy, and every now and then somebody else contributes a bit, but fact is we need everybody we can get :) my impression is that all the spider family pages are either too short or a bit messy, so maybe we'll take your cleaned out tarantula page as a template ;) btw, i personally recommend using references like this. it's possible to sort the refs this way, and it doesn't clog up the source.--Sarefo 12:15, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
I was actually coming here to see if anyone wanted to look at the tarantula page. It is rated "high importance" but is only a b-class article. It is probably one of the most visited spider pages there are and it is just kind of messy. I tried to do some generic "clean-up" edits, but I am no spider expert (I arrived there by clicking "Random Article")Anyway, I just wanted to offer a friendly reminder that the tarantula page needed some work.P337 (talk) 15:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Fen raft spider or Great raft spider

I am just about to work on Great raft spider but have already encountered a problem, I do not like the title! I know it as the Fen raft spider, the IUCN lists it as Great, Fen has more google hits. Just asking here is there any standard on naming Spider articles? MortimerCat (talk) 11:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Genus renames

Hi spiderfolk, new user Vigilius got the idea of preemptively adding " (genus)" to a bunch of spider genera, including unambiguous names. Several hundred of them were changed, so you might want to consider a cooperative effort to change them all back. Stan (talk) 11:06, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Identifying spiders

This article is under Afd. See discussion here.--Lenticel (talk) 02:46, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Also List of types of spiders proposed for deletion. Shyamal (talk) 10:14, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Photo requests

I have modified {{WPSpiders}} to allow |needs-photo=yes to be used. This places them in Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of animals. A more specific category would be desirable as well as the tagging of more articles. A spiders or perhaps broader arthropod category would be a good idea, particularly as non-insect arthropods are thrown in with all the other various animal requests. Richard001 (talk) 11:32, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, by the way, the parameters of the template have also been modified to allow the normal |class= and |importance= code. Please use this now instead, as this is what all other projects use and bots can't read the abnormal code. Richard001 (talk) 23:04, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

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Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 20:52, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Need help identifying

A spider with a black body, large brown abdomen, bright green fangs, and white marking on its abdomen in the appearance of a face. Anyone know what it is? —Preceding unsigned comment added by WhiteChronoWolf (talk • contribs) 01:51, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

body length? where did you find it? --Sarefo (talk) 09:30, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Redirects on "G. species" disambiguation pages

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

Thank you, Neelix (talk) 00:44, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Aptostichus stephencolberti

Anybody knows where to look for the specific authority and taxonomic source for this species? Circeus (talk) 18:38, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cas/biology/bond_jason.cfm has this link http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cas/biology/name_a_spider.cfm, but I think a formal description paper should be awaited before declaring it a species. Shyamal (talk) 18:56, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

New WikiProject proposal: Biota of the UK and Ireland

I've proposed a new WikiProject named WikiProject Biota of the UK and Ireland which would encompass all species and conservation efforts within Britain, an extremely interesting area. The project would include vegetation classification, Category:Lists of British animals, Category:Conservation in the United Kingdom, Category:Ecology of the British Isles, Category:Forests and woodlands of the United Kingdom, Category:Fauna of the British Isles and anything else to do with the flora and fauna of Britain. If anyone is interested just leave your name on the proposal page. Cheers, Jack (talk) 17:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

great pics of webs

here.

Tony (talk) 04:23, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Spiders

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:50, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

La Princesse

Hi guys. Not sure if you caught this or if it is the least bit relevant to your project, but thought you might enjoy! Roisterdoister (talk) 14:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

nice thx ;) --Sarefo (talk) 10:44, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Species help

Just wondering if anyone knows the species of this huntsman spider?. Photo was taken in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia incase if anyone was wondering on the location. Bidgee (talk) 13:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

no idea, but beautiful shots! i added the location information to the commons unknown sparassidae site, yes this is often very helpful in determining the species. i'll see if i find some expert on sparassidae to check this page, but don't hold your breath ;) --Sarefo (talk) 10:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Good article review: spider

Spider has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Images identification

Colleagues, are you sure that the spider on Image:Spider_and_bee_June_2008-1.jpg and Image:Spider_and_mites_May_2008-1.jpg is M. vatia and not some Thomisus sp.? Could anyone here in the project check the identity of the spider? My reasons for a doubt: (1) lateral humps on the abdomen, (2) distance from the anterior to posterior medial eyes is bigger than that from the anterior median eyes to the chelicerae. Alexei Kouprianov (talk) 00:43, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

thanks for noticing! looks like a Thomisus onustus to me. i removed the picture from the relevant articles and re-linked it on the commons. cheers! --Sarefo (talk) 23:03, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Milestone Announcements

Announcements
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Click here for more information or to sign your project up.

I thought this WikiProject might be interested. Ping me with any specific queries or leave them on the page linked to above. Thanks! - Jarry1250 (t, c) 22:21, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 06:37, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Male black widow photograph

I took this shot of a male black widow last night while out backpacking in a remote area of Arizona. Uploaded to commons; thought maybe you arachnid folks could put it in the black widow spider article, as there are no shots of males on the page now. Typically I'd be bold and do it myself, but I figured you editors involved in this project would know better if it's appropriate and, if so, how to fit it in. Tan | 39 23:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Help with name for spider article

Hello, I am the editor that just wrote the article Greenland wolf spider. The latin name is Pardosa glacialis and translates directly into English as "icy, frozen, full of ice wolf spider". This spider lives in Greenland, so I used the same naming structure as Glacier Bay wolf spider. I would appreciate some input on the naming of the article. Thank you. Green Squares (talk) 19:37, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

That name is fine, it is descriptive and isnt likely to cause naming conflicts with other articles. Subverted (talk • contribs) 21:39, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I got in touch with Jens Böcher < JJBocher@snm.ku.dk > he makes the following recommendation:

In agreement with the Danish spider specialist Søren Toft, I recommend that you use the name: 'arctic wolf spider' for Pardosa glacialis. Sincerely yours Jens Böcher Zoological Museum Copenhagen Green Squares (talk) 15:00, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Inactive Tag

I marked this WikiProject as inactive due to a lack of recent project activity. If this tag was placed in error, simply remove it from the top of the page and mark this project 'active' at the WikiProject Directory, here. Andyo2000 (talk) 15:51, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Internal anatomy diagram

A diagram of the internal anatomy of a spider is up for consideration at Featured Picture Candidates. Any assistance with reviewing this diagram would be appreciated. Thanks. Kaldari (talk) 21:55, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Bagheera kiplingi

Just a heads up this spider is news. - RoyBoy 03:53, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

What type is this?

I think I've narrowed it down to Callobius severus, but I'm certainly no spider expert.

Also, anyone is welcome to use this image in any appropriate articles, I couldn't find a good place for it that didn't have something comparable. -- KirinX (talk) 22:40, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, most definitely C. severus, and a female. Males have longer legs with a smaller abdomen. But just to make sure, because Callobius sp. look similar, where did you find it? Bugboy52.4 | =-= 00:23, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
In Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. But I thought it was male due to those front thingies. (ever so technical, I know). -- KirinX (talk) 13:33, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
How silly of me! your right, but it could be either C. severus, C. pictus, but most likely C. bennetti based on design on abdomen. Bugboy52.4 | =-=


Unidentified spider

Does anybody know the species of this spider? In the German Wikipedia its genus was identified as Philodromus. Thanks in advance --тнояsтеn ⇔ 22:25, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this species is in the genus Philodromus, most likely the species Philodromus vulgaris, or the longlegged crab spider. Bugboy52.4 | =-= 12:48, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. --тнояsтеn ⇔ 12:41, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
no prob, i just wish I would seen this sooner then 2 months :) Bugboy52.4 | =-= 17:52, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Philodromus vulgaris is a Nearctic species (North America). How does your "most likely" place it in a nature preserve in the Alps (elev. 2200 meters)? -K. Pfeiffer 188.103.186.66 (talk) 11:25, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know anything about spiders. But due to this post here and a discussion on my German user page (de:Benutzer Diskussion:Thgoiter#Philodromus vulgaris) I changed the image description and removed the image from Philodromus vulgaris. --тнояsтеn ⇔ 12:56, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Peer review request

I've put the article Zygoballus sexpunctatus up for peer review. Kaldari (talk) 20:46, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Proposed change to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)

There is a current proposal to change an animal-related naming convention, which directly effects the the Manual of Style guideline, and the naming conventions policy. If you are interested, your input would be appreciated. Justin chat 06:32, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Pattihughes51 (talk) 03:06, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Lots of new jumping spider photographs

I've uploaded about seventy new jumping spider photographs, which can be found at:

Please use them to populate any genus or species articles which lack taxobox photos. Thanks. Kaldari (talk) 03:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Tarantula still / again needs editing

Tarantula is a large and informative article, but the lead is IMHO too long. Content from the lead needs to be moved into other sections.
I see in the discussion above ("Tarantula Page" Sept 2007 - Jan 2008) that this has been mentioned before, with User:P337 noting that "it is probably one of the most visited spider pages".
I don't really know anything about this subject, so it might be better if a real (professional or amateur) arachnologist took a look. Thanks. -- Writtenonsand (talk) 14:33, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I'll have a go at improving it and adding more references (I keep tarantulas), but it might take me little while - it looks as if the lead actually duplicates some material from other sections, so I'm sure it can be pruned quite drastically -- Boing! said Zebedee 09:07, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Important WikiProject Notice

Good question. Hey everybody, is this project active or dead? I'm working on lots of spider stuff myself, but one person doesn't make a project :) Kaldari (talk) 18:38, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi. I've only just come across WikiProject Spiders when looking for some info, and I see there's really not very much stuff about Theraphosidae (Tarantulas). So I intend to start work on that - writing species articles, expanding stubs, looking for photos. Do two of us constitute an active project? -- Boing! said Zebedee 08:59, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Good question. I'm not sure really. I have an idea though. I'll post the project on the community portal and see if we can recruit some more people. Kaldari (talk) 18:41, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Look at a WikiProject as a collaboration tool. Each wikiproject comes with overhead which detracts from your editing. I had this experience when I started WikiProject Lepidoptera. I no longer consider myself the coordinator there though I do step in from time to time to help out at council meetings if a rep is reqd and no one else attends. If all you want is to develop Spider articles albeit of one family, I would suggest you consider yourself a one or two-man subproject and use the WikiProject Spider infrastructure. AshLin (talk) 07:08, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Unident Argiope

I found a spider (photo 1 & photo 2) on a cyclone fence while doing some aircraft spotting, I believe it is a Argiope protensa (See: [1]) but not 100%. Bidgee (talk) 14:11, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Looks like a good match to me. I'm not familiar with Australian spiders, however, so I could be wrong. Kaldari (talk) 15:16, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Confirmed to be Argiope protensa by an expert who I emailed. Not bad for our untrained eyes! ;) Bidgee (talk) 08:59, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

3D jumping spider

Is there a page where this nice 3D image of the fangs of a jumping spider look good? Jumping spider fangs --Stone (talk) 15:42, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Help on the science ref desk

Anyone here able to help this person? Thanks! ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 20:54, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

I've offered an opinion -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 21:04, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Spiders articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Spiders articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:39, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I have suggested that they add Spider anatomy to the selection list for Wikipedia 0.8. Kaldari (talk) 22:10, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Y'all...over at the Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8, they've had to leave out recluse spider and Australian funnel-web spider due to the low qualities of the articles. They'd like to know if this revision of wolf spider is a good one to include (as an amateur spider collector, I'm a poor judge of this). Please respond at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8#WikiProject Spiders. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 21:59, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Gnathosoma

I've just created a Gnathosoma article, but only covered it for mites and ticks. If anyone wants to add spider aspects (or generally improve it, of course), please do. I haven't removed it from any of the "missing articles" pages for this project. --Stfg (talk) 20:34, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Desert recluse

Hi y'all-- in response to the frequent comments at Talk:Brown recluse spider, I've started Loxosceles deserta. Hopefully the existence of that article will educate the public of California who think they've got brown recluses but in fact have desert recluses.

If anyone has facts, photos, references, or anything to contribute, please do so. Thanks! Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 17:45, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Citation templates now support more identifiers

Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as {{citation}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite web}}...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place |id={{arxiv|0123.4567}} (or worse |url=http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567), now you can simply use |arxiv=0123.4567, likewise for |id={{JSTOR|0123456789}} and |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789 → |jstor=0123456789.

The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):


{{cite journal |author=John Smith |year=2000 |title=How to Put Things into Other Things |journal=Journal of Foobar |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=3–4 |arxiv=0123456789 |asin=0123456789 |bibcode=0123456789 |doi=0123456789 |jfm=0123456789 |jstor=0123456789 |lccn=0123456789 |isbn=0123456789 |issn=0123456789 |mr=0123456789 |oclc=0123456789 |ol=0123456789 |osti=0123456789 |rfc=0123456789 |pmc=0123456789 |pmid=0123456789 |ssrn=0123456789 |zbl=0123456789 |id={{para|id|____}} }}

Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Unidentified arachnid

Heterophrynus?

I took this photo of an arachnid (after some research, it doesn't seem to be precisely a spider) inside a cave in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin. It looks like it might be Heterophrynus based on similar photos, but I am not an expert at all. Could someone identify this so I can start an article (I don't think one exists yet) about the genus or species? Thanks! Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:02, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Yep, looks like a Heterophrynus species to me - no idea which one though, sorry. Best we've got seems to be about the order Amblypygi, which includes them -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:41, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
I would say, judging on from where you found it and the best I could do from the picture, its the Amazonian Tailless Whip Scorpion (Heterophrynus longicornis). Bugboy52.4 ¦ =-= 17:03, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Awesome mandibles there... Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 01:00, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

RFC at Talk:Copulation#Should_the_Copulation_article_exist.3F

You may want to participate in the RFC at Talk:Copulation#Should_the_Copulation_article_exist.3F --Philcha (talk) 12:08, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmmmm. No opinion on this, really, but I must say, watching brown recluses copulate is quite a thrill. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 22:31, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Singapore Blue

Hello! It is concerning "Singapore Blue"[2] (in the taxobox). Does somebody know what for an "Abraham" is meant? I mean what is the full name of this author? --Danny 22:29, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

It's H. C. Abraham, but no idea what the H. C. stands for. Kaldari (talk) 22:13, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Same here - I've only ever seen him referred to as H. C. Abraham -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 22:24, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Okay, thanks anyway. --Danny 17:18, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation opinions

Hi. I'd be grateful if editors which an interest in disambiguation could take a look at Tristis and let me know their thoughts on its talk page. Thanks SP-KP (talk) 10:16, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Removing deprecated taxons from salticidae articles

Please see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/KaldariBot. Thanks! Kaldari (talk) 19:43, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Evolutionary Benefit of Males Cannibalising Females?

Both males and females of the African jumping spider species can cannibalise their partner after copulation. "That equal opportunity behaviour extends to two-way cannibalism as well, with males consuming their loved ones only slightly more often as the reverse" (full article)

My question is - what evolutionary benefit does the male get by eating the female with whom he has just mated? Isn't he reducing his chances of passing on his genes?

Ajgaon 19:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC)ajgaon

None that I can see. Perhaps by eating the female, he kills of a weaker female, thus only the strongest females survive to give birth? Perhaps they like to 'hit and run!'. --81.77.217.161 18:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Reminds me of Wildcats - males will mate with domestic cats, but return to kill the kittens shortly after birth. Seems kind of racist - maintaining genetic purity. With spiders, I think they have only very vague cognitive abilities - 'mate it' or 'eat it' is rather a fine distinction. In many species, males distract the female with a present of prey, or have elaborate signals (tugging web, stamping feet, waving palps, vibrating) to identify themselves.
Have you asked the 'normal' question - Evolutionary Benefit of Females Cannibalising Males ?
--195.137.93.171 (talk) 21:38, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Invitation to assist in adding donated content: GLAM/ARKive

I am the Wikipedia Outreach Ambassador to ARKive, who have kindly agreed to donate an initial 200 article texts about endangered species from their project, to Wikipedia, under a CC-BY-SA license. Details are on the GLAM/ARKive project page. The donated texts include some about spiders. Your help, to merge the donated texts into articles, would be appreciated. Guidelines for doing so are also on the above page. Once articles have been expanded using the donated texts, we are also seeking assistance in having those articles translated into other languages. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns, on the project's talk page, or my own. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:13, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Spider ID question at the reference desk

Can anyone help out? See Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous#Spiders. Calliopejen1 (talk) 16:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Recent renaming of articles

Recently Tara (genus) was renamed to Tara (spider). (see history for additional examples). This would rename appears contrary to WP:FNAME. While WP:FNAME does not specifically mention naming conventions for genus articles, it does list Morelia (genus) as an example. Before reverted these moves, I want to check here for an expert opinion. Boghog (talk) 02:36, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

The general convention for spider genera disambiguated titles is Blahbronattus (genus). If there is a plant genus of the same name, we use Blahbronattus (spider). Other opinions are welcome. You might also want to ask at Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals. Kaldari (talk) 18:00, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. I have started additional discussions here and here. It is clear that there is a diversity of opinions. My own opinion is beginning to change per arguments made by Hesperian (talk · contribs) here. Boghog (talk) 18:29, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Request for Comment: Capitalization of common names of animal species

Hainan spider: ID

Please help ID this species. It is presently on my neck.

Moving slowly, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 16:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

If this image turns out to be needed, I have a 1.9 MB version that I will upload....if I am still alive. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 16:12, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
It's a Sadface Anna Frodesiak-eating spider (Annafrodesiakophagus tristifaciei). :(
Seriously though, it seems to be a female Kidney Garden Spider (Araneus mitificus), of which we don't have an article on... make one! :D See [3], [4], [5], [6], and [7].-- Obsidi♠n Soul 22:41, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
No article? Yay! Thank you! I will make the article as soon as I get out of hospital. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:41, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay, It's an article. But, as it is my first spider article, I have no idea what I'm doing. A quick check would be appreciated. Many thanks. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 04:32, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

On it. And in case, that hospital thing wasn't a joke, heh. Get well soon. :P -- Obsidi♠n Soul 13:00, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Taxbox for Portia species

I wrote the Taxboxes for Portia fimbriata [8] and Portia labiata [9] to include: Spartaeinae, which are standard in the literature since Wanless (1984); citations for all this, except I forgot for Portia africana (easily fixed as the cites are in the text). The taxoboxes for Portia fimbriata and Portia labiata have since been changed to WP Spiders stardard - no citations, no Spartaeinae. I suggest that the extended Taxbox be used where avaibable, to provide more info and to defend it from Randy in Boise. --Philcha (talk) 12:50, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I think including the subfamily is fine. Including citations for every taxon is not normal for taxoboxes though. Generally, the citations should be kept to the article body and only used in the taxobox if they are controversial or likely to be disputed. Also, I believe the {{automatic taxobox}} provides a mechanism for adding references for all taxon levels, but doesn't spam the taxobox with citations for them. Perhaps those articles could be migrated to use that template instead. Let me know if you would like any help implementing it. Kaldari (talk) 19:59, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Taxonomy vs Classification vs Systematics vs.....

Debate on taxonomy sections listed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_life#Taxonomy_vs_Classification_vs_Systematics_vs..... It follows on from discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants#General_structure_for_plant_articles_and_lists cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:44, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Capitalization of common names

A few months ago, a draft capitalization guideline for animals was proposed, but ended up going nowhere. In the absence of an over-arching guideline, it is currently up to each project to reach their own consensus regarding the capitalization of common names. Although most spiders are known by their scientific names, there are several with common names: black widow, bowl and doily spider, red-backed jumping spider, hammerjawed jumper, dewdrop spider, pinktoe tarantula, etc.

At the time of the draft proposal we suggested using sentence case for spider common names (rather than title case), since this is the current convention for most academic writing on arthropods (with the frequent exception of moths and butterflies). Do others support standardizing on sentence case or should we use title case instead? Kaldari (talk) 04:54, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

As it's been about a month and no one has commented, I'll go ahead and assume everyone's OK with standardizing on sentence case. Kaldari (talk) 23:06, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I think sentence case is pretty standard already, with the exceptions of WikiProjects who opted for title case.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 18:34, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

"Australian funnel-web spiders"

I having doubts as to whether this article should even exist separate from Hexathelidae. Can anyone with more info confirm that "Australian funnel web spider" is a discrete common name for particular hexathelids rather than "Australian" + "funnel web spider"?

Please comment at Australian funnel-web spider#What is the article talking about -- Obsidi♠n Soul 22:24, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Ratings

I've been looking over the ratings of articles in the project recently and noticed many are rated dramatically higher than they should be. There are many articles rated "B" which are barely more than a stub. I think a systematic review might be needed. --TeaDrinker (talk) 19:51, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:HighBeam

Wikipedia:HighBeam describes a limited opportunity for Wikipedia editors to have access to HighBeam Research.
—Wavelength (talk) 19:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Unidentified spider

Hello, Could someone please help me to identify this beast? (4-5 cm long) Thanks, Yann (talk) 15:50, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Hello. This is not actually a spider, it is from the arachnid order Solifugae (although they are commonly called "camel spiders", they are not true spiders). I don't know what the exact species is, though. InverseHypercube (talk) 19:20, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
Great photo by the way. InverseHypercube (talk) 20:04, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
OK, thanks a lot! Yann (talk) 20:03, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
It has become a Meme, due to an illusion of perspective ! --195.137.93.171 (talk) 21:56, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Wrong photo on Steatoda bipunctata ?

Someone has suggested it's Achaearanea/Parasteatoda - anyone familiar enough with both to give a definitive ruling + delete it if necessary ?

--195.137.93.171 (talk) 22:03, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm an arachnologist from Portugal and I would like to suggest an article for Steatoda nobilis: http://naturdata.com/Steatoda-nobilis-13251.htm It is in Portuguese and documents this species variations, habits and all other aspects in Portugal (mainland, Madeira and Azores). I believe it is relevant as it is from the native site of the species. Thank you for your time. Best regards, Ricardo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.245.13.207 (talk) 10:40, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Nice collection of photos - I must dig out my camera again, now it's spring !
False Widows have just become slightly notorious in the UK
Can you give a judgement on #Wrong_photo_on_Steatoda_bipunctata_.3F ?
Thanks ! --195.137.93.171 (talk) 22:11, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Misidentified spider pic?

Am I really a steatoda grossa?

The image in the article on steatoda grossa looks nothing like the photos shown here, here and here. Is the image misidentified? Stevage 10:41, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

No it isn't misidentified. It's a male. Spiders exhibit very striking sexual dimorphism, where the females are usually far larger than the males.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 11:10, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
Ah, so we need a good female pic. Stevage 23:27, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
I have these in my house; I'll try and snap one sometime. I tend to see only the females. (The only time I saw a male, I thought it was some kind of recluse! I agree, the dimorphism is very pronounced!) Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 14:54, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Ryuthela nishihirai and Ryuthela nishirai

Is the latter a synonym of the former? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:08, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

No, the only names for that species are Ryuthela nishihirai and Heptathela nishihirai. It looks like someone just titled the article incorrectly. Kaldari (talk) 03:01, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
I moved the article to the correct name. Thanks for bringing it to our attention! Kaldari (talk) 03:06, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
I thank you very much. You are very kind. I moved the image to the right name, and changed the description there accordingly. Cheers, :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:03, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Bavia kairali

Could someone have a look at this? I've mentioned some concerns on the talk page, as a passing stub-sorter. Thanks. PamD 00:30, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

A. bonoi

I want to stub A. bonoi. It's a trapdoor spider named after Bono from U2. But what's the "A"? Trapdoor spider article shows 6 genera, none of which start with A. Many thanks for any help you can offer.

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:37, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Never mind. I found it. Aptostichus Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:45, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Banana Spider methinks

Can anyone identify this spider?

I live in the Foothills of the Applacian Mountains in North Georgia, USA if that helps. I think it is a banana spider. It makes wonderful webs around my door frames. -- ТимофейЛееСуда. 20:19, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

It could be a Nephila species of some sort - it's beautiful. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 02:01, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
Looks like an Argiope aurantia to me, I don't know if there are similar species in the area. --Sarefo (talk) 15:30, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Redback spider nominated at FAC

See Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Redback spider/archive1 - not sure if this wikiproject has a log somewhere....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:48, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Historical redback spider treatment

We have a bit of a dilemma at redback spider which is at FAC at present. The issue is the last paragraph of the treatment section which mentions some historical treatments, mostly now so discounted they aren't even mentioned in any peer-reviewed review article I can find (apart from magnesium). Question is - is it better to list and discount them or just delete the paragraph altogether? --99of9 (talk) 01:18, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I would delete it. It doesn't really add anything useful to the article. Kaldari (talk) 02:21, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Sources

There is a discussion on the historical medical treatment for redback spider bites in the articles FAC. This topic is included in the last paragraph of the "Treatment" section; however, the information available in sources is sparse, as far as I am aware. Any comments? Opinions from WP:Medicine and WP:Australian are also being sought. The sources used in the short section are: Snowman (talk) 12:38, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

  • A newspaper article from 1893 about one treatment given to one patient by one doctor: "The Deadly Red-Backed Spider". Camperdown Chronicle (Vic. : 1877 – 1954). Vic.: National Library of Australia. 1 June 1893. p. 3.
  • A newspaper article from 1951: "Don't Panic, But Treat Red-back Spider with Caution, Say Venom Experts". The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957). Melbourne, Victoria: National Library of Australia. 6 January 1951. p. 3.
  • A newspaper article form 1929: "Red-back Spider". Advocate (Burnie, Tas. : 1890 – 1954). Burnie, Tasmania: National Library of Australia. 7 September 1929. p. 5.
  • A general book from 1894 (the first sections are on Wikisourse, but not the latter sections on health). See preface, which says that "Most of the matter is original, and the rest has been carefully selected and tried by herself, and adapted to the requirements of Australian Homes.": Rawson, Wilhelmina (1894). Australian Enquiry Book of Household and General Information . Pater & Knapton, Printers & Publishers. p. 165 – via Wikisource. [scan Wikisource link]
  • A reliable source to say there is not much evidence that treatment of spider bites with magnesium sulphate works. Also, used to say "Specific treatments for which evidence is weak or lacking are not recommended.": Isbister, Geoffrey K.; Fan, Hui Wen (2011). "Spider Bite". The Lancet. 378 (9808): 2039–47. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)62230-1.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • A primary paper about research on strips of cat spleen in the laboratory: Pinto, J. E. B. (1 August 1973). "Peripheral Adrenergic Effect of Latrodectus mactans Venom". Toxicon. 11 (5): 395–400. doi:10.1016/0041-0101(73)90114-1. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • A newspaper article from 1954: "Beware the Red-Back spider". Western Mail (Perth, WA : 1885 – 1954). Perth, WA: National Library of Australia. 18 March 1954. p. 3. Snowman (talk) 12:38, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Deletion nomination

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that I've nominated Lists of Salticidae species for deletion as I believe the list is unmanageable (with over 5000 species) and redundant (since we already have List of Salticidae genera and species lists under each genus article). Please add your comments to the deletion debate. Thank you! Kaldari (talk) 07:38, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

AfC submission - 06/06

Not sure whether Draft:Caddisfly silk (fibroin) should be merged with Fibroin. FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 16:39, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Male Maratus volans

Your comments appreciated. Jee 13:37, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:48, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Expert attention

This is a notice about Category:Spiders articles needing expert attention, which might be of interest to your WikiProject. It will take a while before the category is populated. Iceblock (talk) 23:19, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Argiope pulchella

Appreciate expert opinion. Jee 05:09, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Spiders to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Spiders/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the Tool Labs tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 04:39, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Regarding overly specific specific numbers

I note that in many spider articles, species numbers are stated as exact. I think this is not the most ideal practice, in that a precise number is rendered incorrect the moment a single species is newly described, transferred to synonymy, or reassigned to a different genus, and keeping track of every taxonomic change would be a tiring, constant task. I think in most cases it would be prudent to be general rather than specific, such as "contains around 20 genera and 150 species rather than "contains 19 genera and 152 species". It is also probable that the larger the taxon, the more likely its numbers will change: a genus with three known species can probably safely be said to contain three species. Articles with such undue precision include Spider_taxonomy#Table_of_Families and the "Diversity" link in many (most?) taxoboxes that link to, e.g. "Tarantula diversity" (123 genera, 931 species) links to List of Theraphosidae species, and could probably be generalized to "around 120 genera, 1000 species". In addition to buffering against taxonomic changes, being general reduces the chance of two articles (e.g. a family and its associated list of species) being in disagreement with each other. I've made a note of this generality on the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spiders/Style_guide, but figured it would be good to discuss it here. Cheers --Animalparty-- (talk) 23:18, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Pet sections

Not sure if there is any general concensus on the proliferation of pet sections, especially in tarantula species articles, they have a tendency to be "care sheet" style sections which IMHO has no place on wikipedia. These should be a properly cited scientific style article and not a place to find out how to look after said animal. I'm goingt o go through a bunch of Brachypelma articles for starters to modify/remove these sections, unless there is some sort of concesus that says otherwise. Do let me know if anyone has a problem with this, I don't want to stand on anyones toes or cause unneccesary arguements. Man Over-bored (talk) 14:53, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, I have removed/updated pet sections from the following:

More to follow Man Over-bored (talk) 13:31, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Comments wanted

If there are any active spider editors around at present, I'd welcome comments at Talk:Spider taxonomy#Table of families. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:49, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Seeking access to an article in Arachnologisches Magazin

I've been working on expanding the article Ralph Vary Chamberlin, a prolific spider taxonomist, and just thought I'd put out a request for anyone that might have access to the German publication Arachnologisches Magazin, which only appears in a few libraries on WorldCat (none of them in the United States).

  • "Beruehmte Arachnologen: Ralph Vary Chamberlin, 1879-1967. [Famous arachnologists: Ralph Vary Chamberlin, 1879-1967.]". Arachnologisches Magazin (in German). 9 (5): 11–12. 2001. ISSN 0944-8667. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)

If anyone could email me a scan or photocopy of the above article, or any other secondary sources that cover aspects of Chamberlin's research/life I would be very much appreciative. --Animalparty-- (talk) 19:38, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Striking request, article obtained! --Animalparty! (talk) 17:27, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

List of Linyphiidae species

Hello. I know nothing about spiders other than that I don't like them, but I I have split List of Linyphiidae species into three articles rather than two. Before, the articles were among the longest on wikipedia. The articles are still way too long, over 100K, but are at least somewhat managable this way. --Descendall 02:08, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Descendall! Keep up the good work!Megaraptor12345 (talk) 23:32, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Vanadalism? on Anelosimus

Am not a spider expert.

The list of spider species in Anelosimus includes some that I consider doubtful. I made a section in its talk page.

Someone appears to have watched the movie "The Big Lebowski" and added species named after the movie and after the lead character "The Dude".

There are several others.

Check the references, the person who's been watching The Big Lebowski appears to have been the taxonomist who named the spiders. Hedge89 (talk) 16:42, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm in the process of updating the list as per the World Spider Catalog. There are some new ones with "odd" names, but they are all genuine. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:35, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Maratus

can someone reasses the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maratus Maybe the increasing attention on these spiders and the continuingly added material warrants a rise in importance? Robertwhyteus (talk) 03:42, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Maratus is currently rated "B". There are some sections missing, e.g. "Distribution and habitat"; are there any Conservation issues? It feels like a low B to me. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:49, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Classification is a mess

The classification of spiders in the English Wikipedia seems to be something of a mess. As one example, there are about 827 articles with a taxobox saying "Suborder: Araneomorphae" as opposed to 166 with a taxobox saying "Infraorder: Araneomorphae", but all the modern sources I've looked at treat Araneomorphae as an infraorder within the suborder Opisthothelae, which is what the Opisthothelae article says. Perhaps there's a clue in the fact that the article says that the creation of the taxon in 1990 (i.e. 25 years ago) was "fairly recent"!

Here's another example, as of 3 October 2015. Start at Nicodamidae. The taxobox says it belongs to superfamily Dictynoidea, which is supported by the Dictynoidea article. The genus article Nicodamus doesn't include the superfamily in the taxobox. The species article Nicodamus peregrinus puts it in the superfamily Amaurobioidea, but Amaurobioidea redirects to Amaurobiidae. The correct position seems to be:

  • most superfamilies cannot be supported by any reliable recent source, and should be removed from taxoboxes and the relevant articles updated to say that they are historic only
  • Nicodamidae is the sister of the large RTA clade according to most recent phylogenies (e.g. Coddington, 2005[1]), so if it were put into a subfamily, would probably have to be on its own. (Note that as of now, the very important RTA clade doesn't have an article.)

The structure of spider articles, whereby family articles usually have a list of genera, genus articles usually have a list of species, but there is also a list of genera and species at a "List of Xidae species" article, introduces major redundancy, and makes updating the lists more tedious than it should be.

Sorting out the muddle is a major task, requiring a number of dedicated editors interested in spiders, but there don't seem to be any around at present. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:56, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Coddington, Jonathan A. (2005). "Phylogeny and classification of spiders" (PDF). In Ubick; Dupérré, N.; Roth, Vincent D. (eds.). Spiders of North America: an identification manual. American Arachnological Society. pp. 18–24. Retrieved 2015-09-24. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help)
@Peter coxhead: Yes, a lot of the taxonomy of spiders on Wikipedia is based on old or poor sources. I think some of it was originally based on Joel Hallan's Biology Catalog which is very ad hoc and outdated. It's also worth noting that the taxonomy of jumping spiders has been completely revised in the past year so most of our taxonomy for that family is wrong now. However, I think it would be most useful to focus on the higher-level taxonomy first (suborders, infraorders, etc.). We should also try to use the {{Automatic taxobox}} when possible. If you want to propose a high-level taxonomy, I would be happy to help clean-up articles to match it. Kaldari (talk) 20:29, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree with your view that we should work top-down. The problem is that genome-based phylogenies, which are likely to be the most influential in the end, are only just beginning to be published. Although they clearly confirm some 'classical' groups and equally clearly refute others, they leave a lot uncertain. So it's difficult to know what to do right now. My understanding of the situation right now is as follows.
  • The suborders and infraorders are confirmed, so this structure is ok:
Araneae
Mesothelae
Opisthothelae
Mygalomorphae
Araneomorphae
  • Mygalomorphae can be divided into two clades, Atypoidina and Aviculariodea, but below that it's still uncertain. The latest paper (Garrison et al. 2015) says that nearly half of the families in the Aviculariodea are "likely not monophyletic". Within Aviculariodea, the clade Theraphosoidina, comprising Theraphosidae and Barychelidae, is supported, although the composition of the two families is questionable.
  • Araneomorphae contains two clades, Haplogynae and Entelegynae, although somewhat differently circumscribed than in the past, and possibly with some families outside both of them.
  • Entelegynae has some supported clades, such as Araneoidea, RTA, Dionycha and Lycosoidea (those with traditional names have different circumscriptions), but it's difficult to connect them up into a single supported cladogram. Orbiculariae and Deinopoidea are pretty clearly rejected by molecular data.
  • As has happened in other major groups, above families, researchers are using clades rather than rank-based names, so that there's no division of say Araneomorphae into a complete set of superfamilies; some families are in clades with names that have the superfamily ending, but many families are not. Superfamilies aren't a useful level at present.
  • Great uncertainties remain. My reaction has been to include tables in articles showing alternative circumscriptions – see Lycosoidea for example. I don't think it's sensible to show any names between family and infraorder in taxoboxes at present, since they are so uncertain. I agree that using automated taxoboxes ({{Automatic taxobox}} and {{Speciesbox}}) is the best approach; then if and when classification settles down it can be set up much more easily and in the meantime we can achieve consistency.
I've been trying to revise some of the top level articles. I've started on Haplogynae; Entelegynae needs serious work as does Dionycha. Spider taxonomy#Classification above families is a "holding" section at present could be expanded to say something about the emerging view. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:08, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
For any clades that are uncertain, I would favor not listing them in the taxonomies if possible. For example, I never listed any tribes under Salticidae since none of them had ever been confirmed by molecular analysis. In retrospect, I'm really glad that I did that since all the Salticidae tribes were completely rearranged this year after extensive molecular and morphological study. I think it's better if Wikipedia's taxonomy is painted in broad strokes until there is some degree of certainty. Kaldari (talk) 21:22, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree. Only when the phylogeny is much more settled will it be worthwhile putting more levels in taxoboxes. What is valuable, I think, is to try to improve our articles on those major clades which do have support, like RTA clade, for example. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:15, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

I may be jumping in a bit late here, but I know for a fact that there are several bots out there aimed specifically at correcting taxoboxes, especially when a taxonomic update is published by a credible source. I remember spotting them a while ago updating plant taxonomies (which is still kind of a mess in the real world thanks to polyploidy, let alone wikipedia). I can't name the bots off the top of my head, but I'll go back and see if I can find them. If someone can come up with a list of really basic changes / swaps / removals to be made, I can put them on the request list when I find the bot again. It would be much easier than going through by hand IMHO. Sesamehoneytart 03:54, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Actually it's much, much better now, since a very high proportion of spider articles now use automated taxoboxes, which means that it's easier to keep the taxonomy consistent (and to update it should there be changes). The most useful action would be to change any remaining manual taxoboxes to automated ones ({{Automatic taxobox}} and {{Speciesbox}}), but I think this is may be beyond a bot. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:43, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead and Sesamehoneytart: One area that is still a mess is jumping spider taxonomy. In 2015, there was a huge revision of the entire family (that was about 20 years in the making). Virtually every salticid taxon between the levels of family and genus was changed. So far, I've just been slowly removing a lot of these taxons from the infoboxes (as most of them are relatively obscure anyway), leaving just the genus, family, and everything above. At some point though, we may want to start rebuilding the sub-family taxonomy based on the revision. The revision is "A phylogenetic classification of jumping spiders (Araneae: Salticidae)", which is open access. Kaldari (talk) 00:37, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
FWIW, it seems that the few automatic taxoboxes for jumping spiders are in good shape (as they generally avoided listing taxons between genus and family anyway). Kaldari (talk) 01:10, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Greetings WikiProject Spiders/Archive 2 Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, Stevietheman — Delivered: 18:08, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

650 new great photographs need to be integrated

I am in the process of uploading a large collection of high quality "bug" photographs by Judy Gallagher from Flickr. First I uploaded 650 spider photographs. In majority of the cases her photographs of a given spider are better than other photograph we have. I began integrating the images into articles and Wikidata (see for example Misumenoides formosipes), but it is a slow going and I would appreciate some help, since I would like to upload more images. Below is a list of categories on Commons , Wikidata items and Wikipedia articles which should be looked at where one of the new images in the category might be better than current photograph in the article:

--Jarekt (talk) 03:44, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I went through the last two pages of Commons:Category:Spider photographs by Judy Gallagher and integrated what I could. Only around 30 were usable, the rest did not have articles or already had enough good photos, but I used what I could.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 05:41, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, I did noticed that for large number of organisms English Wikipedia is lacking articles while many other Wikipedias like Dutch or Swedish have them, see for example Tutelina elegans. I wonder if translation tools work in this direction. Also many of minor species organisms seem to be bot generated, which I think is a great way to generate stubs. I guess English Wikipedia might have a policy against it, but it would be nice not to have fill all those infoboxes by hand. --Jarekt (talk) 15:49, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
The majority of the Swedish Wikipedia species articles were created by a single user using a bot. The same goes for Cebuano Wikipedia, which is the third largest in number of articles yet has only around 140 active users. I think English Wikipedia consensus decided that bot-creation of articles from scouring taxonomic databases led to too many errors or was otherwise problematic (although there are hundreds if not thousands of human created stubs that may just as well have been bot-created). Mere quantity of articles is no substitute for quality, as a simple list of scientific names contains the same info as a dozen stubs stating no more than "X is a species of Y described in [year of description] by [author]". Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a database. --Animalparty! (talk) 01:52, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
Yes, we are still sorting out stub plant articles created ages ago by Polbot. Problems include genus names that needed disambiguating, but weren't – this is hard to automate; out-of-date taxonomies at the time of creation, let alone now; and inappropriate categorization. Editor created stubs can be as bad, but the slower speed of creation means there's a chance to catch up with them. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:52, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
Great pictures, thanks you! I went through the whole set, adding what I could to the EN Wiki without creating too many new pages. --Sarefo (talk) 15:37, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Proposal regarding Salticidae taxonomy

@Peter coxhead, Animalparty, and Sarefo: Hey guys, as I mentioned in an earlier discussion, the taxonomy for the Salticidae family (jumping spiders) has experienced some major upheavals over the last few years. This includes revising virtually all existing taxons between family and genus level, introducing dozens of new taxons, and also moving most existing taxons down a level or two (for example, what used to be the subfamily Dendryphantinae is now the subtribe Dendryphantina). Because the vast majority of reliable sources do not yet reflect these changes (and it's unknown whether most authors will accept these changes or not), it's very difficult to keep these taxonomies straight on Wikipedia. I would like to propose that, for the time being, we avoid using taxons between the level of genus and family for jumping spiders, at least until things have settled down more and it is clear that the revisions have taken root in the literature. Almost all of these taxons are extremely obscure and not used by laymen, so I don't think it will have a detrimental effect to avoid using them. Thoughts? Kaldari (talk) 05:39, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree. It's not just Salticidae either. Time and time again traditional morphologically-based phylogenies and classifications of spiders don't hold up when molecular approaches are used. Few of the traditional superfamilies appear to have been correct, which is why I spent some time removing them from taxoboxes. Genus – family – infraorder/suborder is as detailed as I would go at present in most cases (and, as we know, genera and families aren't stable in some areas either).
If we try to use automated taxoboxes in all spider articles, it will be easier to fix the taxoboxes if and when classifications become more stable. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:44, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
Agree. The subfamily data was never good to begin with. Yeah, the auto-boxes look promising :) --Sarefo (talk) 11:38, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

WikiJournal of Science promotion

The WikiJournal of Science is a start-up academic journal which aims to provide a new mechanism for ensuring the accuracy of Wikipedia's scientific content. It is part of a WikiJournal User Group that includes the flagship WikiJournal of Medicine.[1][2]. Like Wiki.J.Med, it intends to bridge the academia-Wikipedia gap by encouraging contributions by non-Wikipedians, and by putting content through peer review before integrating it into Wikipedia.

Since it is just starting out, it is looking for contributors in two main areas:

Editors

  • See submissions through external academic peer review
  • Format accepted articles
  • Promote the journal

Authors

  • Original articles on topics that don't yet have a Wikipedia page, or only a stub/start
  • Wikipedia articles that you are willing to see through external peer review (either solo or as in a group, process analagous to GA / FA review)
  • Image articles, based around an important medical image or summary diagram

If you're interested, please come and discuss the project on the journal's talk page, or the general discussion page for the WikiJournal User group.

  1. ^ Shafee, T; Das, D; Masukume, G; Häggström, M (2017). "WikiJournal of Medicine, the first Wikipedia-integrated academic journal". WikiJournal of Medicine. 4. doi:10.15347/wjm/2017.001.
  2. ^ "Wikiversity Journal: A new user group". The Signpost. 2016-06-15.

T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 10:38, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

What needs to be done around here?

I am ready to just focus on this project and I am just wondering what all can I do to contribute. How can I help, guys? ThatGirlTayler (talk) 23:49, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

@ThatGirlTayler: some random thoughts.
  • Have a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Spiders/Popular pages. There are some stubs in the top 100. Can they be improved?
  • If you have books about spiders, an idea is to create and/or improve articles about common ones where you live – spiders that people are likely to see and be interested in.
  • There are a lot of spider families listed here as stubs. The articles mostly consist of lists of species, which doesn't tell readers anything about the spiders in the family. It would be good to expand some of them, if the information is available.
  • For taxonomic and scientific stuff, I suggest you register with the World Spider Catalog. This will enable you to access all the papers they hold. It's free to register and access papers for personal and noncommercial use.
  • Articles like this one in the journal ZooKeys are great because the journal has the right copyright for the images to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The descriptions are usually far too technical for Wikipedia, so need careful paraphrasing. I think I tend not to simplify enough.
  • If you understand or can learn about the WP:Automated taxobox system, it's good to convert manual taxoboxes in spider articles to automated ones. The reason is that the classification of spiders is constantly changing at present as molecular analyses are carried out. Many families have been split and merged; subfamilies and superfamilies used in the past are now doubtful. If we automate the taxoboxes, mostly only using genus → family → infraorder/suborder → order, then when clarity does emerge it will be easier to update and add other ranks.
Peter coxhead (talk) 22:19, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Glossary of arachnology terms

Improving Glossary of arachnology terms has been on my to-do list for some time. As with all glossaries, it's difficult to avoid plagiarism accusations, because short definitions have to be precise, which means there are few ways to word them. It definitely needs more diagrams. I've posted some questions at Talk:Glossary of arachnology terms. Please let me know what you think and join in improving this page. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:06, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Disappearance of Nephilidae

The issue of the relationship between Nephilidae and Araneidae has been simmering in the literature for some time. The Nephilidae were moved from a subfamily to a family in 2006, but this has looked wrong in gene-based phylogenies recently, and following Dimitrov et al. (2017), the World Spider Catalog has merged Nephilidae back into Araneidae. Some work needed to sort this out here. The genera involved are:

Peter coxhead (talk) 08:03, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, Community Tech bot will post at Wikipedia:WikiProject Spiders/Archive 2/Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of WikiProject Spiders.

We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:

  • The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
  • The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
  • The report will include the total pageviews for the entire project (including redirects).

We're grateful to Mr.Z-man for his original Mr.Z-bot, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of WikiProject Spiders, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Corythalia voluta

Corythalia voluta needs to be created. An article already exists in the Indonesian Wikipedia at id:Corythalia voluta, despite the subject having little to no affinity to Indonesia (the page says that spider can be found in El Salvador). This project is being notified because the subject is a type of spider. WikiProject El Salvador and WikiProject Indonesia will also be notified. — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs) 16:05, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mr. Guye: is there any reason C. voluta needs an article more than any other species of Corythalia, none of which have an article? There are probably thousands of spider species without an article on English Wikipedia. Several foreign language Wikipedias have thousands of taxonomic stubs created by bots that scoured databases and cobbled together an "article". Note that Indonesian stub article has essentially the same information on C. voluta as the article Corythalia: that C. vouta was named by F. O. Pickard-Cambridge in 1901, and is found in El Salvador and Panama. You're always welcome to be bold and create any article you think is needed. Cheers, --Animalparty! (talk) 18:37, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Guidance on referencing authors of taxa

I've just made this update, which I believe reflects current practice, and certainly the guidance given in other Tree of Life Wikiprojects. Please discuss here if you don't agree. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:48, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Diamond spider

The diamond spider has been rediscovered in the UK. Unfortuately no Latin name is given and Diamond spider is currently a redlink so I don't know which article to add the info to. Mjroots (talk) 17:50, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanatus formicinus is the species rediscovered, but I'm not sure the name "Diamond spider" is a widely-enough used common name to be a redirect to the species or the genus Thanatus. It's possible that several members of the genus are called Diamond Spiders, but I haven't yet found any reliable sources (e.g. field guides, nature magazines) that use this name, prior to the synchronized media blitz we're now seeing. --Animalparty! (talk) 04:46, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
This is a classic example of the way in which vernacular names get invented. The popular media won't use the Latin name, so seizes on a vernacular name, often formerly obscure and quite commonly not unique to that species. Then the number of Google hits convinces editors that this is the WP:COMMON name. Once the name is used in Wikipedia, it spreads even more widely. A side-effect sometimes is that a genuine folk name for a species, with perhaps a limited currency but a real history and interest, gets displaced. (Curtis Clark, who doesn't seem to be around now, had some good examples for plants, I seem to remember.) We should not indulge this process. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:29, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
So, someone needs to write Thanatus formicinus then? Mjroots (talk) 10:19, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
Well, I've created a stub to start things off. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:03, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Gaius villosus

In the news yesterday, the world's oldest spider died at the age of 43. There's now an article for Number 16 (spider), but we don't have an article for its species, Gaius villosus, nor is the (apparently monotypic) genus listed at Idiopidae. I'm afraid I won't have time to write an article myself before the news cycle moves on; if somebody else would like to start an article that would be fantastic. Plantdrew (talk) 21:32, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Request for comment on recommending usage of automatic taxoboxes

There is an RfC regarding recommending usage of automatic taxoboxes at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life#Request for comments: Should the automatic taxobox system be the current recommended practice?. Inviting anybody who watches this page to contribute their thoughts to that thread.

WikiProject Spiders is currently using automatic taxoboxes in 73.3% of project tagged articles that have any form of taxobox. Plantdrew (talk) 01:26, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Spiders 'described in' decadal categories submitted to CfD

@ Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 September 22#Category:Spiders described in the 1750s, per Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life#Request for comment: categorizing by year of formal description.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:44, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Subscribe to new Tree of Life Newsletter!

"I've never heard so much about crinoids!"

Despite the many Wikipedians who edit content related to organisms/species, there hasn't been a Tree of Life Newsletter...until now! If you would like regular deliveries of said newsletter, please add your name to the subscribers list. Thanks, Enwebb (talk) 00:23, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Table of families updated

I've updated the table at Spider families to the latest version of the World Spider Catalog. This was a major task, as there have been a large number of changes since the last update, with families split and merged.

  • Some new or resurrected families don't have articles yet.
  • The examples need to be checked to ensure that they haven't moved families.
  • Some of the English names may not be appropriate if a family has been split.
  • The various lists of spider species by family need checking for those families that have changed.
  • The diversity figures in family and genus articles need to be checked.
  • The Araneae template hasn't been fully fixed.

Peter coxhead (talk) 12:14, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

If anyone has time, there are some useful tasks as noted above. In particular:
  • I've created a stub at Halonoproctidae; it needs more work. It has been separated from Ctenizidae, so that article needs to be checked to make sure that it doesn't say anything that's not true of the reduced family.
  • I've created stubs for Atracidae, Macrothelidae and Porrhothelidae; they need more work. All were removed from Hexathelidae, which needs more work done on it, because now that Atracidae isn't included, it doesn't contain highly venomous spiders.
  • The "List of Xidae species" articles need fixing or creating because of these changes.
  • @Sarefo: the distribution maps for these families are likely to be wrong or don't exist.
Peter coxhead (talk) 19:16, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
By the way, I'm aware that the two monogeneric families, Macrothelidae and Porrhothelidae, should be merged with their genera, but I'd rather leave them for a while – it's easier to work on the family aspects. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:48, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
As of May 2019 the family pages and lists of species are updated to the best of my ability. Sesamehoneytart 20:54, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Location foul-ups

Hello everyone- I've been updating articles semi-automatically by scraping several sites, but I recently noticed that the locations of appearance are coming out kind of wonky. Usually I keep track of the articles I've worked on since a certain update, but I don't know when this particular problem originated. I've patched it on this end, but I don't know how prevalent the problem is or how many articles are affected. Sesamehoneytart 20:49, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

@Sesamehoneytart: can you give specific examples please? --Nessie (talk) 20:25, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
On further inspection, it might not be as bad as I thought. There are two main categories of this error. The first occurs if there are multiple locations on different continents (and some other specific conditions), one or two of the continents may be dropped, leaving an incomplete location list. The second occurs when broader locations and more specific locations are given to different species in the WSC. They're technically not wrong, but the redundancy kinda hurts my soul to read. I'll give you a list of examples (Linyphiidae genera starting with "S", because that's what I happen to be looking at currently) and I'll resist the compulsion to fix them... for now :-)
Examples of the first type:
  • Sisicus - found in North America and Europe, but only Europe is listed.
  • Sintula - locations in include Algeria and a few others that aren't listed in the article itself.
  • Scotinotylus - North America is dropped entirely
Examples of the second type are harder to find because they blend in better:
  • Sisicottus - Locations include "Kurile Islands" and "Russia", even though the Kurile Islands are a part of Russia.
  • Scotargus - Locations include both "Algeria" and "North Africa"
@Sesamehoneytart: I think it's down to your code. But note the Kuril Islands dispute, so not all are indisputably Russian.--Nessie (talk) 19:03, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Politics seem to make just about everything unnecessarily complicated. For that particular example, what I'm pulling from the WSC includes the Kurile Islands in Russia ["USA, Canada, Russia (Kurile Is.)"], so maybe they know something I don't. There are plenty of random islands technically owned by some European nation that can be just as confusing. Réunion is about as far as France as you can get. I try my best to go by geography rather than political boundaries, but when I come across places like this one or Borneo that are either split or disputed, I'll zoom out to encompass all sides. if the Kurile Islands didn't specifically indicate Russia, I probably would have gone with "East Asia". I have about 200 lines of code dedicated simply to figuring out the appropriate talk pages. It's kinda crazy. Sesamehoneytart 19:29, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
@Sesamehoneytart: actually I have an Excel spreadsheet where I tried automating the collation of locations across species in a genus, after pasting in the entries from the WSC. I see that I never finished it because of one of these problems. "Kurile Islands" and "Russia" is fixable: if WSC has "Russia (Kurile Islands)", you can just use one of them, depending on how specific you want to be. "North Africa" and "Algeria" (and similar cases), where one species has a wide distribution and another has a narrower distribution within the wider one, is tedious to automate since you need lists of regions with their subregions, which is why I gave up. "Russia" is particularly difficult, because as used by the WSC it includes both European and Asian parts of the Russian Federation, but editors have often treated "Russia" as part of Europe when categorizing. The WSC doesn't seem to use a consistent system, unlike the WGSRPD used for plants, so it has to be worked out by experiment. Sigh... Peter coxhead (talk) 20:12, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead: I'd love to have a peek at that spreadsheet. My database has a list of locations with a relative level of zoom, and a separate table just for keeping track of relationships between locations. I'll scrape the locations from the WSC and convert them, and every time an inconsistency pops up, I'll build in a hack for it. ["Island", "Islands", "Is."] all convert to ["Is."], etc. I'll dump them into a priority tree (-ish) structure, then starting from the bottom, I'll condense locations into larger encompassing locations until they are a manageable size (default ~5 ish) The WSC crew is actually quite responsive to inconsistencies and misspellings, and they've cleaned up just about everything I've brought up to them. I really need to push it all to github before I get fired and can't access this computer anymore.
Hearing you say it's a daunting task is an interesting perspective / wake up call for me. It sort of scares me, because I *should* find it daunting and boring. There was a time when I would have said the same, but somewhere between cleaning out the same airline seats and scrubbing the same toilets, life just *became* redundancy; as if there is no alternative. Same flights called down to the same gates at the same times every night. The airport never closes; it's all the same- holiday, weekends, whatever- planes fly every day and a few more spider articles get updated. Sesamehoneytart 21:07, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Okay, update- I'll be ducking out of this project for a while to get some other more important things in line first, but I'll come back when it's all done. I have to pull the sensitive data out of this repo (my wsc api key etc.), but I'll post a link to the github page when I'm done. It's cake php and js; works like a website. I'm also going to export my db to a google sheet and link that here as well. It never occurred to me before now, but it's a tool that any of us can use, so I'm going to try to make it as available as I can. You have to jump through some hoops to set it up, but if you have trouble, ping me anytime and I can help you set it up on your OS and machine of choice. Yall are the best. Cheers! Sesamehoneytart 16:01, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
@Sesamehoneytart: several points:
  • Perhaps "daunting" wasn't quite the right word, but it's a bigger task that I was willing to tackle, so I didn't get as far as you did (e.g. fixing things like "Is."). Part of my reluctance was, as I hinted above, due to the absence of a system, both in WSC and here. Here, for example, it's not clear what boundaries different animal projects use for 'continents' like "Europe" or "Oceania" (I recently made an 'executive decision' at Category:Spiders of Oceania).
  • Yes, the people at WSC are, in my experience, very responsive, which is one reason why it's such a good source. They really seem to want to fix problems. Sadly not all online taxon databases are the same (no names publicly!).
  • I did develop some Javascript-based tools for extracting information from plant databases; these were used by a few editors (one who has since left), but at the time I didn't have access to a server that ran PHP. Now I do, so maybe I should go back to this. PHP has never been one of the languages I've used much (although up to 11 years ago I did teach Javascript).
  • I'm a huge admirer of the amount of work you've done on spider articles. I hope to see you back soon!
Peter coxhead (talk) 06:04, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Alt taxobox

Agaricus campestris
View the Mycomorphbox template that generates the following list
Gills on hymenium
Cap is convex or flat
Hymenium is free
Stipe has a ring
Spore print is brown
Ecology is saprotrophic
Edibility is choice

I recently found myself on several fungus pages and they have a sort of secondary fungus-specific taxobox that serves as a quick references to common characters (example to the right). Any thoughts on using this sort of template as a quick reference to characters like "number of legs", "eye pattern", venomous? / dangerous?, "number of eyes", length, etc.? Sesamehoneytart 16:37, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

@Sesamehoneytart: one of the things I strongly dislike about this infobox is that it's not explicitly sourced, and you have to search the article to see whether there's a source there. It's very important for edibility for obvious reasons. (When I give a talk that includes fungi I usually quote the statement in one of the books I have: "formerly considered edible" – how was it found not to be?) Personally, I'm not keen on adding this infobox for spiders, partly for this reason, and partly because it's yet another thing to maintain with a very limited number of editors interested in spiders. (I suspect that over 95% of spider articles edited recently have been by you!) Peter coxhead (talk) 09:39, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead: the Taxoboxes aren’t explicitly sourced, but I agree it is even harder to add citations in the {{mycomorphbox}} than in taxoboxes. But that’s more an issue with an implementation. The other issues I’ve come across with this template involve what pages it goes on. Species, yes, but genera? Higher taxa? It also doesn’t work with smaller fungi like rusts and smuts, let alone yeasts and the microfungi. But anyway, now I can add trying to improve it to my to do list. It is nice to have. Boxes should organize information in the article, if it isn’t supported by the body text, technically it shouldn’t be there. --Nessie (talk) 14:55, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
@NessieVL: the taxoboxes aren't explicitly sourced – well, information such as the authority, synonyms and subdivisions should be sourced, and for many groups usually are, and there are explicit parameters for two of these. Ideally the parent taxon should be sourced in the taxonomy template for automated taxoboxes; I have on my to-do list to look into having some kind of unobtrusive link or marker shown in the taxobox if there is a source in the relevant taxonomy template (it was suggested in a discussion in the past). Peter coxhead (talk) 16:25, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

I've added these in the "resources" section, but the link to the article building program on github is here. The database information is here. I'll do my best to update both as frequently as possible. The bugs listed above are patched to the best of my ability, but the affected articles are still out there somewhere.Sesamehoneytart 21:32, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

@Sesamehoneytart: What happened to the Github repo? Kaldari (talk) 20:37, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
I might not have made it public. Hang on, I'll go fix it. Sesamehoneytart 16:37, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Repo should be public now Sesamehoneytart 19:41, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Bot request

On a recent edit to Inermocoelotes, I noticed that the WSC link was wrong.

So far, it has always been the case that when I screw up one page up, I also screwed up the rest of the ones that I did that day. I'm not sure how bots work, but I feel like this is a problem that a bot could address. Something like running through all the pages in the wp:spiders category and run a string replace from "http://www.wsc.nmbe.ch/XXX" => "http://www.wsc.nmbe.ch/genus/XXX" Sesamehoneytart 16:55, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

There are not many bots getting approved for new tasks these days. Repetitive mass edits are mostly geting done by editors using AWB. Pinging @Tom.Reding: who has been extraordinarily helpful with mass edits in other Tree of Life articles. Plantdrew (talk) 19:49, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: thanks for the ping.
@Sesamehoneytart: sure, that's a simple fix. I find ~1800 pages matching your 'before' case. I'll add 'genus' to them if there is an existing category matching the regex [A-Za-z ]+? genera, and see what remains.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:12, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
@Sesamehoneytart: only 103 remain to be looked at individually. Most are lists:
Remaining 103 not automatically corrected
  1. Aguapanela arvi
  2. Ammonius pupulus
  3. Box kite spider
  4. Diving bell spider
  5. List of Actinopodidae species
  6. List of Agelenidae species
  7. List of Amaurobiidae species
  8. List of Ammoxenidae species
  9. List of Anapidae species
  10. List of Antrodiaetidae species
  11. List of Anyphaenidae species
  12. List of Archaeidae species
  13. List of Atracidae species
  14. List of Atypidae species
  15. List of Austrochilidae species
  16. List of Barychelidae species
  17. List of Caponiidae species
  18. List of Corinnidae species
  19. List of Ctenidae species
  20. List of Ctenizidae species
  21. List of Cyatholipidae species
  22. List of Cybaeidae species
  23. List of Cycloctenidae species
  24. List of Cyrtaucheniidae species
  25. List of Deinopidae species
  26. List of Desidae species
  27. List of Dictynidae species
  28. List of Diguetidae species
  29. List of Dipluridae species
  30. List of Drymusidae species
  31. List of Dysderidae species
  32. List of Eresidae species
  33. List of Euctenizidae species
  34. List of Filistatidae species
  35. List of Gallieniellidae species
  36. List of Gnaphosidae species
  37. List of Gradungulidae species
  38. List of Hahniidae species
  39. List of Halonoproctidae species
  40. List of Hersiliidae species
  41. List of Hexathelidae species
  42. List of Idiopidae species
  43. List of Lamponidae species
  44. List of Leptonetidae species
  45. List of Liocranidae species
  46. List of Liphistiidae species
  47. List of Malkaridae species
  48. List of Mecysmaucheniidae species
  49. List of Microstigmatidae species
  50. List of Migidae species
  51. List of Mysmenidae species
  52. List of Nemesiidae species
  53. List of Nesticidae species
  54. List of Nicodamidae species
  55. List of Ochyroceratidae species
  56. List of Oecobiidae species
  57. List of Oonopidae species
  58. List of Orsolobidae species
  59. List of Oxyopidae species
  60. List of Pacullidae species
  61. List of Palpimanidae species
  62. List of Paratropididae species
  63. List of Philodromidae species
  64. List of Pholcidae species
  65. List of Phrurolithidae species
  66. List of Physoglenidae species
  67. List of Phyxelididae species
  68. List of Pimoidae species
  69. List of Pisauridae species
  70. List of Plectreuridae species
  71. List of Psechridae species
  72. List of Psilodercidae species
  73. List of Scytodidae species
  74. List of Segestriidae species
  75. List of Selenopidae species
  76. List of Sicariidae species
  77. List of Sparassidae species
  78. List of Stenochilidae species
  79. List of Stiphidiidae species
  80. List of Symphytognathidae species
  81. List of Synaphridae species
  82. List of Telemidae species
  83. List of Tetrablemmidae species
  84. List of Tetragnathidae species
  85. List of Theraphosidae species
  86. List of Theridiidae species
  87. List of Theridiosomatidae species
  88. List of Titanoecidae species
  89. List of Toxopidae species
  90. List of Trachelidae species
  91. List of Trechaleidae species
  92. List of Trochanteriidae species
  93. List of Udubidae species
  94. List of Uloboridae species
  95. List of Zodariidae species
  96. List of Zoropsidae species
  97. Magua wiangaree
  98. Megadictynidae
  99. Obatala armata
  100. Perilla teres
  101. Phruronellus
  102. Poaka graminicola
  103. Singa (spider)
If you don't want to edit them manually, you can let me know which should have 'genus' added to all matching links on the page (if it's not all then the page is best left for manual edit), and I can override my 'genera' category rule.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:38, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
@Tom.Reding: 100 is much better than 1800. I just checked out a few of the other ones- it looks like they're all making the same mistake. The regex should be:
  • Capture: /http\:\/\/www\.wsc\.nmbe\.ch\/(\d+)/
  • Change to: /http\:\/\/www\.wsc\.nmbe\.ch\/genus\/([1])/
Honestly, I can't imagine this particular change ever being wrong, because the only time I'd have written this set of characters is to type the url, and it only catches the incorrect ones. Sesamehoneytart 16:45, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
@Sesamehoneytart: I see your point - it's unlikely that someone else made the exact same omission (I was concerned about other ranks being valid in place of 'genus' in the URL).
 Done with the remainder.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:12, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
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