Talk:Type species

A note

Type species is a bit in a large article that also and also and also discusses. I think it would be a better idea to split up that article to discuss the holotypes et al and seperatie the type species bit out of there. GerardM 20:58, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Clarity

This article does a pretty poor job of explaining that a type species is just a species of name foo bar, where foo = bar, and that that's really all there is to it. (And if that's not the case, well then it does a *really* poor job of it, but that's what I was able to glean from the link to the article on the sunfish node.) --Belg4mit 04:59, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it would help if you expressed yourself more clearly ? 10:40, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the definition is not sufficiently clear for someone not especially familiar with biological taxonomies. I came here from the article on smallmouth bass because I was curious about what a "type species" is, so I followed the link. If I am reading the quoted definition correctly, a type species is the species in a genus (or other category) that the genus name is attached to. This means if, for example, scientists discovered through genome analysis that smallmouth bass and largemouth bass are not genetically closely related, smallmouth bass would keep the genus name Micropterus whereas largemouth bass would be branched off into its own genus or moved into an existing one. Articles like this one are what they are referring to in the Slashdot article Does Wikipedia Suck on Science Stories?.--NeantHumain 16:56, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's the case that type species means foo=bar; eg Tyrannosaurus rex is a type species. ErikHaugen (talk) 23:02, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Not being a biologist, I have no idea what anything in this article means. It was linked from this sentence in Passerine: "The names "passerines" and "Passeriformes" are derived from Passer domesticus, the scientific name of the type species – the House Sparrow..." --64.149.41.29 (talk) 13:53, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Examples

This article could benefit from a few example of type species species. For example, Western Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) and Spectral Tarsier (Tarsius tarsier). Surikell (talk) 06:31, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more, I think much of the confusion arises from the lack of examples. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.142.224.132 (talk) 18:09, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

And maybe pointing out for us non-specialists that it is talking about those species whose two-part names are made up of the same Latin word twice. (If I understand the article correctly.) --79.209.29.186 (talk) 15:53, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, more examples would help a lot.

And maybe the first instance where this word/concept was developed would additionally provide more history.

—DIV (120.17.190.46 (talk) 11:20, 7 December 2016 (UTC))

By the way, the interpretation you came up with — which is probably what I would have arrived at from reading this article — is apparently wrong, based on the fact(?) mentioned in the Giraffe article that Giraffa camelopardalis is "the type species".

—DIV (120.17.190.46 (talk) 11:28, 7 December 2016 (UTC))

Trying to make it clearer

I had a go at fixing it up a bit, including giving one example. Currently the section within the article Type (biology)#Types in zoology gives a clearer explanation of Type species than this article does. Invertzoo (talk) 19:36, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Taxonomy diagramme

The diagramme is 'explained' as "Diagrammatic representation of different nomenclatural interpretations for species. Each taxonomist has a different view for genus attribution, but the reference on type species is preserved, and ensures precise communication."
So I'm told that, "the reference on type species is preserved", but how could I know this from the diagramme???
Better would be: "the reference on type species is preserved, as shown by .........".
—DIV (120.17.190.46 (talk) 11:25, 7 December 2016 (UTC))

Agree that the diagram did not add to, but rather cluttered the page. I've removed it. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:38, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Monacha example

For example, the type species for the land snail genus Monacha is Monacha cartusiana. It seems like this is a misleading example since M. cartusiana was described in Helix. This makes this make the type species Helix cartusiana, no? Umimmak (talk) 14:05, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Well, it's still the species that contains the name-bearing type, but the ICZN is clear that type species should be cited under their original names, so this needs to be fixed, which I will. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:43, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! I wasn't sure whether it was more accurate to say something along the lines of of "type species is [current combination], cited as [original combination]" or something like "the type species is [original combination], now known as [current combination]". Umimmak (talk) 18:38, 13 April 2018 (UTC)