Talk:List of invertebrates of California

Ambitious scope!

This listing, if complete, would run into hundreds of thousands of species. Just the insects and gastropods alone would be overwhelming in numbers. Keeping the taxonomy up to date on such a diverse listing will also be a headache indeed; the mollusk section taxonomy (such little there is) is already out of date. However, as the article becomes larger and larger, it can be spun off into separate lists for each phylum or smaller taxon. Some decisions will have to be made, for example with the marine fauna, where will the line be drawn: intertidal species only? Continental shelf only? Invertzoo (talk) 15:25, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

To be honest, this list was created because I wanted to be able to find a list of species for a side-project of mine... however, I wasn't able to find anything on the matter and there are very few lists out there that deal with the different species. I know that the Invertebrate page has its controversies because of the Vertebrate vs. Invertebrate debate, but there are lists of California mammals, flora, etc, but a huge chunk of the fauna is missing from Wikipedia. The idea would be to spin off the lists as they become larger, because, frankly it should get larger. This allows control over the lists before they get spun off so they are easier to maintain. As taxonomy changes, it may be mitigated by setting the appropriate redirects.
As for boundaries, intertidal would keep it more manageable, but ecologically, the Continental shelf might be more accurate as it more accurately encompasses "California". I'm also thinking of reformatting the tables, as the taxonomy makes it hard to keep organized in such small subsections... for example some of the mollusks' families are no longer valid and the superfamilies are used instead. It may be best to make a sortable table with the information as complete as possible, so if the genus or family changes or disappears, the list is still functional. Sdpg33 (talk) 21:11, 9 September 2014 (UTC)