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Adherence to correct spelling of scientific names as determined by nomenclatural Codes

User:UtherSRG has, in the process of refusing to allow an uncontested move of an article from an incorrect spelling of a genus name to the ICZN-compliant correct spelling of that name, stated today that "We aren't beholden to the ICZN." As an ICZN Commissioner, I think it's important to establish, here, that third-party sources that are in demonstrable violation of the ICZN (or the other nomenclatural Codes) are not acceptable as sources for Wikipedia (except in the context of being cited as using the wrong spelling). Just because 9 out of 10 authors misspell a scientific name does not mean Wikipedia has to accept that as the correct spelling, if even a single authoritative source exists that demonstrates that a different spelling is correct under the relevant Code. Is it really necessary or appropriate to compel editors to submit a formal request to WP:RM every time they find an outright and easily-confirmed error in a taxonomic article in Wikipedia, instead of simply fixing it?

Scientific names are not a "popularity contest", and no organism can have more than one spelling of its scientific name; only one spelling is correct, and all other spellings are not, and need to be fixed if they appear anywhere, Wikipedia included. More to the point, there are no third-party sources that take precedence over nomenclatural Codes, so there should be no expectation that - as UtherSRG suggests - a scientific name shouldn't be changed in Wikipedia until and unless there are multiple third-party sources available for citation that use the correct spelling. That's certainly not how taxonomy works, and I don't really think that all the admins here would agree that this is how Wikipedia works, either. In fact, in taxonomic practice, species-rank scientific names can change spelling even where NO publication appears with the correct spelling: this often happens with mandatory gender agreement (e.g., when a genus is synonymized with a genus of a different gender, authors do not always publish the new spellings of all the included species names; it's "an exercise left to the reader"). It is therefore entirely possible for the correct spelling of a scientific name to have ZERO published citations - but the Codes tell us what the correct spelling must be, even if it is never literally published, and that same accepted principle certainly should cover Wikipedia. Is this really subject to dispute?

This isn't a petty matter, or personal thing, this is a really fundamental aspect of how the science of taxonomy works, and how it interacts with Wikipedia, and I think it's important to be clear whether or not Wikipedia acknowledges formally-accepted rules of science as having primacy, so I hope we can have a civil discussion about this. It affects ALL scientific names, which are governed by well-established nomenclatural Codes, and account for a very large percentage of the articles in Wikipedia. If there is nothing explicit in Wikipedia policy regarding the need for scientific names to comply with the relevant Codes, then maybe now is a good time to make a push to do so. Dyanega (talk) 20:19, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

If the original genus name is clearly verifiable in the original description, then i see no problem with changing it to that, even if the majority of taxonomic literature is incorrect. I would like to see evidence from the academic literature that the spelling error is acknowledged if available. The problem is though, why would researchers trust the spelling of species on Wikipedia over what other scientists are using in the academic literature? I certainly wouldn't on first glance.

I think a more significant issue is your mass changing of species names to correctly match the grammatical gender, which results in species names that have never been used outside of Wikipedia. That's essentially WP:OR, and it doesn't really do anything to correct what researchers are using, because why trust Wikipedia over the academic literature? This is something that needs to be resolved in academic venues, rather than the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:56, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

I suppose that WP:COMMONNAME was the argument used, which would make it a Wikipedia issue. I would argue that (for extant species anyway) that binominal can hardly be described as common names. This would be different for dinos (e.g. T. rex), and I opened a can of worms by moving something boldly, but I do have move rights. If I'd have found an article about a taxon using the scientific name misspelled, I'd have probably just moved it without the RM. YorkshireExpat (talk) 21:27, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Preferrably changes like these would be done with reference to the proper ICZN communication and/or entry on the matter. The Morrison Man (talk) 21:51, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Adding self-made corrections to several species names in article space is not only WP:OR, as previously stated, but also extremely confusing to the public and should be avoided at all cost. If the ICZN has issues with a nomenclature, it should resolve these issues with the concerned researchers and avoid doing it via proxy encyclopedia. The nomenclature used on Wikipedia should reflect the current scientific consensus on the matter in the published sources, not the opinion of private individuals, be them ICZN consultants or New Latin amateurs. Any species names that you have changed in the past to satisfy the expectations of the ICZN should be moved back to their situation within the sources. Don't forget that Wikipedia is often used as a generalist and practical handbook, even for researchers, and can give to the people with power to change the nomenclature the false impression that the changes have been done in effect in the litterature, which is often not the case. By modifying Wikipedia articles arbitrarily to satisfy your opinion on the requirements of the ICZN, you're actively going against the interest of the ICZN in the long run, and spreading potential disinformation on the Internet.

When I tried, myself, to include an etymology for Stegotherium back on my early editing days, inferred on the etymology, in New Latin, of these terms, this addition was criticized, and I took it down, due to it never occuring in any sources consulted. Similarly, your expectations on spellings are in a quite similar situation.

If 9 out of 10 authors misspell a scientific spelling, this is a misspelling. If 10 out of 10 authors misspell it, this is a consensus. As an ICZN commissioner, you should be able to correct, by yourself, any infractions to the code, or at least to contact the respective authors. Wikipedia is not a proxy for a scientific dispute, but must observe the consensus. One paper would suffice, but we need at least one paper.

Mandatory gender agreement, or anything like that, only concerns scientific publications. Wikipedia should be a reflection of those scientific publications, not the scientific publication that makes the decision. The correct spelling of a scientific name can't be decided by one random editor here ; if we allow you to take these kinds of decisions, which we shouldn't, we would also allow any other editor to add their own interpretation of the correct New Latin name, which would quickly become, as we say colloquially around here, the Far West, and would end up doing infinitely more harm than good to public perception of scientific names, academic consensus, and naturally to the ICZN itself.

A really fundamental way of how Wikipedia works is by removing, by all means necessary, any original research, and to focus on substantiated observations in the sources. Contrarily to academic publications, Wikipedia is only a repository of information already available elsewhere, and as such can not be the support of any taxonomical change, even if a code comes into conflict with it. I'm entirely favorable with the ICZN's effort to standardize scientific nomenclature, but Wikipedia is not the place for such an effort. All modifications done to already existing article to correct its declensions or genderizations should be treated as original research if not substantiated by at least one published work.

In the case of Cyrtophleba/Cyrtophloeba, the ICZN doesn't matter much. What matters is that Rondani, the genus author, takes natural precedence, and that any subsequent author committed an orthographic mistake. If this name had not been effectively published, the ICZN would not take precedence, as the correct orthograph would be the only one present in the source material, Cyrtophleba, as far as Wikipedia is concerned. I've grown to know a bit a number of my fellow editors, and I know for a fact that, for most of them, knowledge of Latin, Greek, and the, often tricky, Latin-Greek fusion that is taxonomical Neo-Latin can be quite lackluster. Forcing them to systematically correct any scientific name they stumble upon to respect a code that is outside the general guidelines of Wikipedia will be a quite dangerous endeavor. Larrayal (talk) 00:55, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Now that a few people have weighed in, I hope I can be allowed to address a few of these points. The argument I was making was general, not focused on the specific case that triggered it, but since User:Larrayal raises that case, let's use it as an example. What it exemplifies is the conflict between authoritative and non-authoritative sources, and my argument is that an editor who is competent enough to distinguish between authoritative and non-authoritative sources should be allowed to act on that knowledge. KNOWING that a given source is spelling a name wrong, and another right, and acting accordingly, does not - I would contend - constitute "original research" any more than consulting a dictionary for the spelling of a word. I assume that Wikipedia accepts the spelling given in a dictionary before any other sources, no matter how many have it wrong. For example, when I Google Search for "tumeric", the exact match only, I get over 5 million hits. However, that spelling does not appear in Wikipedia except as a redirect to the correct spelling. If editors are able to exclude "tumeric" from Wikipedia because it is misspelled, then it should be just as easy to exclude a misspelled scientific name when there is an authoritative source that shows it is wrong, and create a redirect - just like for "tumeric". In the case of Cyrtophleba/Cyrtophloeba, the ICZN is crucial to the resolution. Why? Because Rondani spelled it both ways in the original publication, and only the ICZN gives explicit instructions as to how such a case is resolved. In fact, the list of misspellings is extensive: CRYTOPHOEBA, CYRTHOPHLAEBA, CYRTHOPHLEBA, CYRTOPHLEBA, CYRTOPHOEBA, CYRTOPLOEBA, and CYRTHOPLAEBA - but only Cyrtophloeba is accepted under the ICZN, because it was selected under ICZN Article 24.2.4 by the original author acting as First Reviser. There is one print source that explains this, and one online source, the BDWD. There are numerous other sources that use the wrong spelling, including some sources that people who don't know any better will generally consider authoritative, such as GBIF. Bear with me here, please, because this very, VERY intimately relates to the argument that several of you have made, that Wikipedia exists outside of the academic sphere. It most emphatically does not. Wikipedia is linked inextricably to all of those online resources like GBIF, ITIS, IRMNG, BioLib, Fauna Europaea, IPNI, WORMS, Fossilworks, etc., both directly and through intermediates like Wikidata and Wikispecies. Most of those sources, however, are not authoritative sources of either taxonomic data, or nomenclatural data. Some are aggregators, and accumulate both good and bad information, without discriminating, and most of the others are manually-curated by people who are not taxonomists. What this means is that a lot of misinformation exists, and persists, through this interactive network of online sources that are effectively immune to being corrected. Even a world authority is unable to go in and fix a misspelling in any of these sources. This directly contradicts the claim made above that somehow taxonomists could exercise control over the appearance of misspellings online. They CANNOT. Aside from taxon-specific resources like the BDWD, the majority of online sources of scientific names are NOT screened by taxonomic experts, and most are unresponsive to external feedback. The name Cyrtophloeba is a perfect example of the problem - there IS a definitive published source that very explicitly gives the correct spelling and explains it, as well as the BDWD, but only a few of the many online sources have incorporated this information. GBIF, for example says that Cyrtophloeba and Cyrtophleba are BOTH "accepted" names, which is literally impossible, but because GBIF lists the latter misspelling as "accepted", other sources have picked it up and propagated it. Wikidata does not include Cyrtophloeba at all, because Wikidata is generated from Wikipedia, and until recently, Wikipedia used the wrong spelling. The point is that PRINT PUBLICATION of the correct spellings of names typically does little - or nothing - to impact the appearance of these names in the various online sources, because that's not how these online sources work. There is either a time lag, or a labor lag, or some barrier, so what appears in print may or may not eventually find its way into these sources. That's where Wikipedia is different, and crucially important to the scientific community. Wikipedia (and Wikispecies) is perhaps the only venue where new scientific knowledge can be disseminated immediately and accurately. You don't seem ready or willing to acknowledge how important that is - the claim that Wikipedia is not used by academics is utterly disingenuous, as it ignores how little reliance modern scientists place on print publications, and instead rely primarily on finding information online. I've been helping train taxonomists for the past 25 years, and they now use Google Search for essentially everything, and most have never used a library. For almost any scientific name you type into Google Search, Wikipedia is going to be the first result. The next most common results are going to be these other online sources like GBIF, ITIS, IRMNG, BioLib, IPNI, and such. Since Wikipedia is the only one of these sources where errors in scientific names can be fixed directly, it is essential that Wikipedia ALLOW for misspellings to be fixed there. Otherwise, scientists - yes, scientists, not just laymen - are generally going to accept the results of a Google Search uncritically; in a very large number of cases, they won't know when a name they have typed in is misspelled, or what the correct spelling is, UNLESS there is an entry in Wikipedia that explains it. In other words, a misspelled name that has found its way online is going to propagate, proliferate, and confuse people until and unless there is an entry in Wikipedia that sets things straight. I am going to ask those of you who think I'm overstating the case to try an exercise: without referring to Wikipedia or Wikispecies, how easily can you determine, definitively, which of these two spellings is correct: Lepisma saccharina or Lepisma saccharinum? It's one of the most common insects in the world, so it SHOULD be easy, right? This demonstrates exactly the opposite of the claim that academia can keep its own house in order - academics use online searches to do their research, and especially for things like the spelling of scientific names, the majority of authoritative sources are online, and NOT in print. Wikipedia is supposed to present facts, not misinformation, even when that misinformation is widespread. Do people honestly feel that an editor who discriminates between misinformation and fact is engaging in "original research" by doing so, and therefore prohibited from fixing errors? To use one of the examples above, it IS original research if you manufacture an etymology that does not appear in a dictionary, but NOT original research if you're consulting a dictionary that does contain it. I don't see how consulting any of the nomenclatural Codes, and citing that Code, is fundamentally different from consulting and citing a dictionary. Dyanega (talk) 17:35, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Personally I'm with Dyanega on this one. The fundamental issue, I think, is what is meant by "verification", given that "verification not truth" is the requirement here. The most reliable source for the correctness of a scientific name that is governed by a nomenclature code is that code, not usage, whether by professional biologists or others. Of course we must mention widespread orthographic variants, but our articles should be titled and should use the name that is correct under the relevant code, always provided this can be clearly sourced to the code. (An advantage of the areas in which I mostly edit, plants and spiders, is that there are taxonomic databases regarded as authoritative for these groups, which usually have the correct names under the Codes and will make corrections if they are told and accept that there are errors. Also correcting botanical names seems to be less controversial – botanists have only recently abandoned Latin descriptions, so are still expected to know some Latin and follow gender agreement, etc.) Peter coxhead (talk) 12:09, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I also agree with Dyanega perpetuating clear errors is not in keeping with the concept of providing accurate information. I also do not consider such corrections as WP:OR there are afterall references with either spelling. As such the editor here should make their decision between those publications based on an assessment of compliance to the ICZN Code. It is also risky to accept incorrect spellings as, although possibly not the case in this situation, it can lead to unnecessary homonyms being apparent (pseudo-homonyms as they are not really homonyms they are incorrect information) and as an Encyclopedia striving for accurate information should be a priority. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 16:59, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Im NOT with Dyanega. If a spelling is not found in any source, we here at wikipedia can never, at any point be the source that first publishes it. I would highly suggest reading OR and deeply contemplating the repercussions if this dicussion were happening at the wider village pump forums. I suspect that Dyanega would at the very least be chastised, if not outright topic banned for violation of POV COI editing rules. Its problematic that Dyanega continues to introduce "corrections" in instances where there IS no reference to the orthographic variation being used.--Kevmin § 19:15, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, there are two distinct issues here. The thread started over a case where there were multiple spellings in the literature, and there was a source that explained which spelling was correct under the provision of the ICZN. When there are multiple spellings in the literature and a code-based argument for which spelling is correct, we should follow the code-based argument. UtherSRG's argument that we should determine the spelling to use by application of WP:COMMONNAME is nonsense. That's not how Wikipedia does taxonomy. If a species has been placed in different genera we don't decide which genus to place it in by looking at the number of Google hits for every combination. We follow recent sources that have coherent genus concepts. And when the IOC changes the vernacular name of a bird (usually due to a change in circumscription, but sometimes with no change in circumscription), Wikipedia changes the vernacular name (IOC vernacular names for birds are not WP:COMMONNAMEs, but COMMONNAME is not the sole thing to consider in titling articles).

The other issue, that Dyanega has brought up before is whether Wikipedia should correct spellings when there is only one spelling in the literature, and the spelling in the literature is incorrect under the provisions of the ICZN. This happens a lot with lepidoptera because lepidopterists don't care about gender agreement. Wikipedia should not be the only source for a spelling that is found nowhere else in the literature. I do see species epithet that I suspect don't agree with the gender of the genus. But I'm not certain that the gender of the genus is what I suspect it to be. And I'm not certain that the species epithet isn't a noun in apposition that doesn't need to agree with the genus. I guess it would be a little less OR if I changed a spelling while providing a reference that explicitly gave the gender of the genus (but I suspect a big part of the lepidoptera problem is that such references don't exist). Plantdrew (talk) 21:11, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

I was referring to the case at hand specifically where there are multiple publications. The original spelling is always published it's in the original description, subsequent spellings are erroneous unless a nomenclatural explanation has been given. Which would mean you would have at least two publications to choose from if there are two spellings. I do appreciate that WP as an encyclopedia cannot make the first move on this I totally agree with Kevmin on that but this is unlikely to be the case in most instances. The reason I do not consider it WP:OR is because in the absence of a publication justifying an alternate spelling for a species name the only correct spelling is the one in the original description. That is not original research, you are following the original description. If there is a justifiable spelling change in a publication that is still not original research because again you are just following a review publication and should be doing so. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 21:48, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

The issue I was involved with there was only one known primary source and no known tertiary srouses using the corrected spelling at the time. Later it was found there were more tertiary sources. And while I'd called out COMMONNAME, what I intended was to wait for multiple tertiary sources to confirm the spelling correction. - UtherSRG (talk) 16:27, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Having thought more fully about this, I no longer have an opinion one way or the other about correcting onwiki, but I think the correct action for incorrect emendations made in recent scientific papers is that a request for correction should be made to the relevant scientific journal. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:04, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia follows taxonomic precedents set by the existing literature, Wikipedia should never itself attempt to set precedents; we follow, don't lead. We have clear rules about that at WP:OR and WP:synth. This is not the right venue to emend names, that should be done through publications or petitions within the relevant fields. Only when such a process is finalized and accepted, then we can change it here accordingly with no problem if it can be cited. FunkMonk (talk) 09:52, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

At no point have I said anything about emending names. Let's be perfectly clear about that. Changing the spelling of a species epithet from "striatus" to "striata" when it is transferred into a feminine genus is not emending the spelling - under ANY of the nomenclatural Codes, these are gender-mandated spelling variants of the same name, and changing one variant to another is not an emendation; an emendation is a change that results in a different name, like changing "striatus" to "stratus". What I am and have been referring to in this thread are - primarily - these mandatory spelling changes that, under the various Codes do not ever need to be published in order to take effect. Gender agreement is simply the most common mandatory case, but there are other similar situations (such as when there are two spellings of a name in the literature and only one is valid). I will give the most common and broadest example that occurs: a genus-level phylogenetic analysis is published, in which genus A and genus B are synonymized, and/or genus Y is separated from genus X, of which it had previously been a synonym. Each of these genera may have dozens to hundreds of constituent species, but since the paper is about the generic classification, the authors do not list all of the re-combined species names. Hundreds of papers like this are published each year. MANY times, the species affected by the generic reassignment are moved into genera of a different grammatical gender, and MANY times, this means the spelling of some species names will need to be changed because they are adjectives. The point I am trying to establish here is what policy should apply, in Wikipedia, in this sort of situation; if Wikipedia adopts the new classification, then I argue that editors should also comply with the relevant nomenclatural Code and adopt the necessary revised spellings of the species names, even when the individual spellings have never appeared in print. If a botanical revision comes out that says that the genus Gonolobus is now a subgenus of Asclepias, that would mean over 100 species presently treated as masculine need to be moved into a feminine genus. If an editor changes the present Gonolobus article so it appears as a subgenus of Asclepias, they should make the required changes to all the affected adjectival names in the list, and move any bluelinked articles to a new, correct title. In such a situation, it is entirely possible that it could take several years before anyone published all of the new spellings in a citable source, so a policy that insists on waiting for a citable source to appear is, I would argue, entirely inappropriate in such cases. A rare species like Gonolobus barbatus might not have its new name (Ascepaias barbata) appear in print for decades, if no one is actively publishing about it. It does not make sense to me to say that editors would be forced to make an article titled "Asclepias barbatus", a spelling that directly violates the ICBN and misleads readers, just because the name Asclepias barbata had never been published. Here's the thing about this example: in this basic scenario, the name Asclepias barbatus would never have been published anywhere, either, so if the principle is to never use unpublished names in Wikipedia under any circumstances, editors would be unable to do ANYTHING whenever genus affiliations are changed without the publication of a new species list. Such a strict policy stands to do more harm than good, and that's why I would instead argue that we need a policy that allows editors to adhere to the nomenclatural Codes when contending with lists of species and titles of articles whose spellings are demonstrably incorrect - i.e., that an editor who changes the spelling of a name to comply with a relevant nomenclatural Code is NOT violating the prohibition on "original research", and NOT going to have their edits reverted. Dyanega (talk) 16:54, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

It is still not our job to do. We report what is written elsewhere. Nothing more, nothing less. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:01, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Sure, we can and must report when mis-spellings are common – but this doesn't stop us saying that they are mis-spellings. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:12, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Actually, if UtherSRG's comment is taken at face value, editors are NEVER allowed to say something is misspelled until and unless there are mutlitple published sources that say it is misspelled, and those sources are cited. Dyanega (talk) 17:18, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes. Indeed. Correct. Anything else is WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. It is not our job to correct errors in publication. It is only our job to report what has been published. If no publication has used what the ICZN calls correct we should not use any unpublished spellings. To use an unpublished spelling is OR and SYNTH. If there are multiple spellings in one or more publications, we can note this. We are not to make the determination as to which is correct. Less strictly, we do have to make some editorial decisions, such as what to put in our taxoboxes, etc. However, we should make some note in the body of the article along the lines of "most publications use X spelling, while some (fewer) publications use Y spelling". We can point to the ICZN and note what the code says is correct. But we should not make the correction beyond this. Again, to go further than this is OR and SYNTH. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:27, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Going further - when a publication specifically calls out a mispelling and makes the correct and then later papers adhere to this correction, we can at this point drop the misspellings. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:29, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

UtherSRG - I'm not trying to badger you, honestly, I do understand where you're coming from, and why you might perceive "granting an exception" as a "slippery slope" instead, but my not-so-hypothetical example above is one I would like to know how you would address, given the strict prohibition your policy entails. To reiterate: if a paper came out that sank the genus Gonolobus into the genus Asclepias without providing a list of species, and no one published an updated list that included all of the new name combinations for, say, 10 years, are you saying that Wikipedia editors would have to wait for 10 years to list the Gonolobus species under the genus name Asclepias simply because there was no published literature placing any of those individual species into Asclepias? If so, does that not seem like a policy that is detrimental to the goals of Wikipedia? Dyanega (talk) 18:30, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Question 1: Yes. We report what has been published. Question 2: No, for OR and SYNTH is more detrimental. It just isn't our job to do that work. The paper that makes that change should note the gender change required. (Not that we can make that happen...) I don't even think they would have to list all 100 species; they can simply say that they note the gender change of the genus and perhaps list a small number of actual changes. (Even that smells too close to OR and SYNTH now that I re-read it.) I suspect they would be referring to some of those species anyway to make the determination that the genus should be demoted to a subgenus; if they do refer to some species and continue to use the older spelling, it is even harder to justify making the change. But no, I doubt we'd have to wait 10 years, as I'd expect other sources to pick up the gender change and start using the appropriate new names, and then we can point there. Basically, if there is no primary, secondary, or tertiary source we can point to, we are out of bounds to make a change. Pointing to the ICZN's code is not sufficient; to do so would absolutely be SYNTH. Either the original paper should note the change in some way (preferably by a full listing of the name changes), or later papers or other secondary publications would have to use the newer spellings, or some reliable tertiary source such as a database would have to make those changes. If none of those happen, we can't point to some place for a reader to verify the change, so we should not make the change.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we do go and make the change to those 100 species in Gonolobus and then 10 years pass and still no one else has published anything about any of those 100 species, then Wikipedia looks like we don't know what we are talking about, that we make stuff up on our own. Wikipedia has no deadline. We can wait as long as we need to have a source note the change and then we can pick it up. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:01, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Okay. Now let's say that in those ten years, the type species of Gonolobus, Gonolobus macrophyllus, has had a new publication about it which squarely places it within Asclepias, but the remaining Gonolobus species have not.

Are you then arguing that we should move Gonolobus macrophyllus to Asclepias, while retaining all the other species at Gonolobus—in spite of the fact that the status of the genus is tied to its type species, and our acknowledgement of the new placement of the type species therefore inherently means Gonolobus cannot be the correct name for any of these lingering species?

Because if anything would make Wikipedia look like we don't know what we're talking about, it's that sort of thing... AddWittyNameHere 19:44, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

@Dyanega:, I feel like I must be misunderstanding your example, because that's not how the ICBN works. You can't publish a paper saying "Gonolobus is a synonym of Asclepias and all Gonolobus species now have combinations in Asclepias". Well, technically I guess you could publish such a paper, but it would not establish the combinations in Asclepias. You need to actually publish each combination and make it explicit that you are doing so: "'Gonolobus is a synonym of Asclepias... Asclepias barbata comb. nov., basionym Gonolobus barbatus...". The person who invokes the magic words "comb. nov." then get credited in authority citations (following the parenthetical name of the author of the basionym). As far as I'm aware, if it was published as Asclepias barbatus, that would still count for establishing the combination, but would be a correctable error.

POWO (and Wikipedia) treats Genyorchis as a synonym of Bulbophyllum. We have an article on Genyorchis macrantha; the POWO record states "This is name is unplaced". Nobody has ever published Bulbophyllum macranthum (and maybe nobody will ever need to; if somebody says that Genyorchis macrantha is a synonym of Bulbophyllum fooianum, POWO could go with that synonymy and get rid of the "unplaced" flag).

Purely for the record, a replacement name has now been published for Genyorchis macrantha, namely Bulbophyllum deshmukhii. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:54, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

I also hadn't understood the ICZN to work like you are implying. You can just lump a genus without explicitly publishing new combinations for the species (and you can split!!! a genus by just saying "some of the species should go in this other genus" without enumerating which species are affected)? Lumping may lead to secondary homonyms. Wouldn't those need to be dealt with by explicitly publishing replacement names? Plantdrew (talk) 19:54, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

That was my fault for forgetting - in an attempt to make this not PURELY about the ICZN - that in botany, new genus combinations have independent authorship. Let's pretend, then, that they're animal genera. And no, the ICZN does not at all require that you have to indicate which species are being lumped or split. That's taxonomic, not nomenclatural, and up to the editors and reviewers of a journal to insist upon or ignore. Dyanega (talk) 21:43, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

yeah this comes down to what people can do and should do..... Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 20:45, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with the idea that Wikipedia's "no original research" policy means we should not change specific epithets, but Dyanega brings up a good point around what to do if a change in generic classification doesn't explicitly deal with all the species involved.

I have a non-hypothetical example. Ferran et al. (2022) sank the otter genera Aonyx, Amblonyx, and Lutrogale into Lutra. They discussed the extant species, but said nothing about fossils. What if Wikipedia accepts that reclassification, and I want to write an article about the fossil species Amblonyx indicus Raghavan et al., 2007? If I use the original combination, Wikipedia looks inconsistent because Amblonyx is a synonym of Lutra. But if I recombine the species name, fix the gender agreement, and use Lutra indica, I have made up a name combination, which goes against our policies. (And in this case, I've also created a secondary junior homonym, which is another matter that needs sorting out.) I don't know what the right answer is. Ucucha (talk) 15:33, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

You should use the older combination fir the article title, while in the article you can discuss that Ferran et al 2022 did what they did, and note that the ICZN rules say the name should be changed. Are you consistent with all existing publications on that taxon? Yes. Are you avoiding OR and SYNTH? Yes. Are you indicating there's an inconsistency between the existing taxon publications and the publication that made a changed? Yes. Are you maintaining the integrity of Wikipedia? Yes. Are you creating new problems? No. Would you create new problems if you did something other than this? Yes. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:59, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

There has been a lot of interesting discussion about this, but I think it comes down to whether nomenclatural codes or Wikipedia rules take precedence when choosing the name for the title of a Wikipedia article. Doesn't this dichotomy fall under WP:TRUTH and more specifically Wikipedia:Wikipedia is wrong? Esculenta (talk) 19:35, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

well Dyanega they do have the issues of OR and SYNTH here on Wikipedia, personally I think the slippery slope could be avoided but the intracies of policy and how to impliment them is a difficult discussion on Wikipedia. On Wikispecies we would alter all the names accordingly as we update the new combination, however in saying that we have no OR or SYNTH policies and hence do not face that issue, plus as a smaller wiki with all our editors being at least somewhat involved in taxonomy it is possibly a little easier for us. This of course means it will be parsed to Wikidata and can eventually end up on Wikipedia anyway. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 20:51, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Deletion of Eunectes akayima

I have made a suggestion for deletion of the page on Eunectes akayima Here as the name is not going to stand in anyway that can use this name and it is premmature to try. When new taxa come out it is better to give a little time before creating a page to let the dust settle. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 03:19, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

I would not endorse wholesale elimination of the content, especially the extensive discussion. I might, however, support a merge of the content into the article for Eunectes murinus, with maybe a greater emphasis on the critical reviews (those suggesting that while there may well be a separate northern species, it should probably be called Eunectes gigas, of which akayima is likely a junior synonym, if it's even an available name at all). There is already one paper that says this and can be cited now, and I imagine there are going to be other similar papers or reviews published to support that particular outcome. At that point, when there is community consensus as to the splitting of the species, the appropriate content could be removed and placed into its own article, with E. gigas as the scientific name, and the history of the name discussed. Dyanega (talk) 14:55, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps you would consider stopping by and giving your opinion on the talk page of the Northern green anaconda article, where there's more discussion The Morrison Man (talk) 16:11, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

April lichen task force newsletter

The April issue of the lichen task force newsletter is available here. Delivered by MeegsC (talk) 21:17, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Potential identification issue with photos from commanster.eu (cross-post from Commons)

See discussion at Commons. (The misidentified photos I've found so far are all of insects, but this could be an issue for other animals and even plants and fungi.) Monster Iestyn (talk) 18:38, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Correct spelling of Bubalus wansijocki/Bubalus wansjocki

The article Bubalus wansijocki asserts that "wansjocki" is an error and that "wansijocki" is the correct spelling (without any good citation I might add), but the vast majority of scientific literature spells it "wansjocki" [1] rather than "wansijocki" [2]. The original publication is presumably the 1928 book "M. Boule, H. Breuil, E. Licent, P. Teilhard de Chardin Le Paleolithique de la Chine Masson et cie, Editeurs, Paris (1928)". I can't find an online version for this publication, so I have no idea which spelling is correct. Would appreciate help resolving this issue. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:32, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Just for proper evaluation, note that the conditions under the Zoological Code allowing for changes to spelling are very stringent and explicit, and note in particular the example given:

32.5. Spellings that must be corrected (incorrect original spellings)

32.5.1. If there is in the original publication itself, without recourse to any external source of information, clear evidence of an inadvertent error, such as a lapsus calami or a copyist's or printer's error, it must be corrected. Incorrect transliteration or latinization, or use of an inappropriate connecting vowel, are not to be considered inadvertent errors.

32.5.1.1. The correction of a spelling of a name in a publisher's or author's corrigendum issued simultaneously with the original work or as a circulated slip to be inserted in the work (or if in a journal, or work issued in parts, in one of the parts of the same volume) is to be accepted as clear evidence of an inadvertent error.

Examples. If an author in proposing a new species-group name were to state that he or she was naming the species after Linnaeus, yet the name was published as ninnaei, it would be an incorrect original spelling to be corrected to linnaei.

By way of comparison, a colleague published a species named "tolkeini". In the text of the paper, the etymology said "Named after J.R.R. Tolkein". Because the name was misspelled in the etymology, the only evidence that the name was misspelled is external, and the Code prohibits the use of any external evidence. Accordingly, this species is still spelled "tolkeini" despite being an obvious error on the author's part. I wouldn't be surprised if the "wansjocki/wansijocki" issue is similar, but the prohibition on the use of external evidence is very important, and not to be overlooked. Dyanega (talk) 16:39, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

The databases linked in the taxonbar all use wansijocki. The PBDB says it "belongs to Bubalus according to Croft et al (2006)" (doi:10.1644/06-MAMM-A-018R.1), which uses wansijocki in the systematics section. REPAD has an entry for Bubalus wansijocki Boule & Chardin, 1928 that states "Synonyms: Bubalus wansjocki Boule & Chardin, 1928; Buballus wansjocki Boule & Chardin, 1928 [orth. error used by (Dong et al., 1999:130)]". —  Jts1882 | talk  16:46, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Heh, reminds me of the poor Ginkgo which is a misspelled ginkyo (japanese for silver apricot, also sounds a lot better). I really wish the ICZN fixed spelling according to etymology, it would be satisfying. — Snoteleks (talk) 18:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Using categories for measuring number of taxa

Not sure if anyone else is interested in this but I like the idea of being able to gather a number of species, genera, etc. of higher taxa through the category system of Wikipedia. We already do this for at least genera and families, and although not all taxon pages are correctly categorized, I am currently reorganizing the protist categories to make this easier. But I realized not all taxa are accepted, and perhaps creating categories called "Accepted species" or "Accepted genera" would be way too much work. I'm thinking that we could make two categories for unaccepted taxa instead, named "Junior synonym" and "Basionym", so that we can obtain the number of accepted species by taking the total number of species and subtract the basionyms and junior synonyms. But perhaps this can't work, because we would have to somehow distinguish between synonyms of species and synonyms of other ranks such as genera and families, so that we only take species into account. This makes me think the "Accepted [taxon level]" idea is more realistic. Someone who has more experience with categories can probably shine some light on this.

On another note, could we use the automatic taxobox system to let a bot automatically categorize them in their taxon level? Of course that still leaves redirects (i.e. synonyms and monotypic taxa) for manual categorization, but I think it could be useful anyway.

Would love to explore both of these ideas. It'd be kind of like building a taxonomic database, and it would help us editors see what amount of coverage we have on a given taxonomic group (e.g., we could see results such as "around 40% of described annelid species are on Wikipedia", etc.). — Snoteleks (talk) 13:36, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Petscan might be able to do what you want. This search for squamate species looks for pages in Category:Squamata (and subcategories) that use {{speciesbox}} and returns 11239 results.—  Jts1882 | talk  14:03, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

That's excellent, thank you. — Snoteleks (talk) 14:08, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

We did this with lichen species in the lichen task force, and I liked having the number of species readily available so much that I did the same with fungus species. I've grown accustomed to not worry so much about "accepted" species. Buellia frigida isn't "accepted" by Index Fungorum, but they don't indicate why. However, it's perfectly "notable" by Wikipedia standards. Esculenta (talk) 15:32, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree, but I was referring to redirects from unaccepted combinations, not unaccepted species that have their own independent article. We already categorize redirects, but many of them are unaccepted synonyms of accepted species. — Snoteleks (talk) 15:37, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@Esculenta So the lichen species category completely disregards junior synonyms and unaccepted combinations. Should I do the same with protists? It seems more intuitive, but then do you categorize junior synonyms? Or do you not categorize them at all? — Snoteleks (talk) 15:40, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, we disregard them (in the "species" counts). I'm not sure I see any advantage in including them, and then having to do math to figure out the species count. The # of taxa is what we're interested in, right? (not the number of synonyms/redirects) The junior synonyms are categorized normally ("R from alternative scientific name|fungus") Esculenta (talk) 15:46, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I guess I just didn't think of that option. Thanks. Also, great work with the lichen species category, it is so satisfying. Eventually I hope we have such lists for major protist groups as well. — Snoteleks (talk) 15:47, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

@Esculenta I have more questions regarding your system. Do you keep the 'Lichen species' and 'Fungus species' separate, or do lichen species receive both categories? Also, do you categorize genera? If so, do you keep monotypic genera in their own category, as it currently happens with things like brown algae? — Snoteleks (talk) 15:55, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

They are distinct but interconnected; fungus species is the parent cat of lichen species. For lichens, we also categorize genera, families, orders, and classes (haven't gotten around to doing this for the fungi yet). Monotypic genera are kept in higher-taxa subcats (eg. category:Monotypic Lecanorales genera. Esculenta (talk) 16:10, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

@Esculenta I'm thinking of designing the protist species categories in a similar manner, but making distinct categories for every protist group that has more than a certain number of species. This would imply deleting a lot of intermediate categories that are for smaller groups. I was thinking that 2,000 species could be a good threshold. Any thoughts on this? — Snoteleks (talk) 17:12, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

TBH, I'm not sure. I guess it depends on what your objectives are. One of the goals of the lichen task force is to eventually have a page for each lichen taxon, so the taxon categories help give a sense of progress towards that goal. E.g., there are roughly 1050 lichen genera; our category:Lichen genera cat shows that we are close to getting them all bluelinked. We are quite far from doing that for the 20,000+ lichen species, but it's nice to be able to track the year-to-year progress. I suppose my advice is to plan out your category structure carefully beforehand to avoid future Caftaric/Nono64/Notwith scenarios! (check archives if you're interested and are unfamiliar with their historical nightmare categorization schemes) Esculenta (talk) 17:26, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

@Esculenta Useful advice, coincidentally I started doing exactly that. I opened a word document just to start planning protist species categories, because I expect that without planning I would end up going insane. — Snoteleks (talk) 17:29, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

@Esculenta One more question. Is there any way to make categorizing easier than going through each individual article and manually changing or adding categories? — Snoteleks (talk) 18:52, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Other than making a bot to do it for you, I don't think so. But alt-tabbing in batches and hot catting is pretty quick imo. Esculenta (talk) 19:26, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

@Snoteleks:, commons:Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot might be helpful for you. When you are in a category page, it allows you to select articles to put in a different category without needing to open each article. Plantdrew (talk) 02:48, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

@Plantdrew Woah, thank you so much. This is a lot faster! — Snoteleks (talk) 12:44, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Help requested: Streblomastix family

I'm trying to look for the original description of the family of the metamonad Streblomastix. Although the wiki article claims its family is Polymastigidae, sources point towards an enigmatic family known as Streblomastigidae, often referring to a chapter in the 2000 book Illustrated Guide to the Protozoa. This chapter, in turn, refers to the first volume of Traité de Zoologie by Pierre-Paul Grassé as the origin of various oxymonad families, including Streblomastigidae, but does not explicitly say Grassé is the author of the family. Can anyone get a hold on an online version of this treatise and verify if Grassé actually describes the family Streblomastigidae? — Snoteleks (talk) 18:43, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

In particular, the citation is of a specific chapter in the treatise: "Grassé, P. P. (1952). Famille des Polymastigidae, Ordre des Pyrsonymphines, Ordre des Oxymonadines. In: P. P. Grassé. Traité de Zoologie, Vol. I. Masson et Cie, Paris. Pp. 780–823." — Snoteleks (talk) 18:49, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

The citation is on Google Books, but only snippets can be seen. If you go to this page and enter "Streblomastigidae" into the search (""From inside the book"), you can see bits of the pages the keyword is on. From one of the snippets (page 797), it does indeed look like there is a description of the family. The family authority, however, is given as Kofold et Swezy, 1919. Hope this helps. Esculenta (talk) 20:17, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! It did help. I checked the Kofold & Swezy publication, which is at BHL, and they indeed described the family. — Snoteleks (talk) 20:47, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Rafatazmia

Most of the article is a digression about the controversy about discoveries by the person it was named after. If he is considered notable this can be moved to an article about him. WP:BLP would be relevant. Lavateraguy (talk) 20:01, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Changes to protist categories

The past few days I have been revamping the category system for protist taxa. Please take a moment to review the changes made:

1. "[Taxon] taxa by rank" renamed to "[Taxon] taxa". Reasoning: to include unranked taxa and to simplify the category name.
2. Creation of "[Taxon] species" categories for major groups. Reasoning: this was inspired by the category:Fungus species and category:Lichen species effort, since the species rank is arguably one of the most important in taxonomy and it could be used to quantify how many species are represented in Wikipedia.
3. Several minor groups ommitted, with their species and genera merged to higher taxa. Example: 'category:Cercozoa species' → category:Rhizaria species. Reasoning: only major groups (+2,000 species) are allowed their own separate categories due to the sheer quantity of species.
4. Several major groups ommitted, with their subcategories merged to higher taxa. Example: 'category:SAR supergroup taxa' → 'category:Protist taxa'. Reasoning: this was also inspired by the category:Fungus species and category:Lichen species situation, where the purpose of categories is to quantify taxa into two easily recognizable groups, without unnecessary intermediate clades diluting the effort. This shall be done to other higher clades such as 'bikont'.
5. Paraphyletic taxa deprecated. Example: 'category:Excavata species' → 'category:Metamonad species' + 'category:Discoba species'. Reasoning: paraphyletic and polyphyletic taxa (such as Chromista) are becoming increasingly obsolete, and thus make categorization more difficult.

Any criticism or discussion is welcome. In addition, these changes should ideally be implemented into category:Eukaryote taxa as well. — Snoteleks (talk) 23:07, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Brief comment - which nomenclatural Code governs names in these groups is often difficult to pin down, or may even be contentious. Editors working with some of these taxa may come into conflict if (e.g.) one editor treats a name as if it were zoological, and another editor treats it as if it were botanical. For example, authorship citations of the form "Coleps hirtus (O.F. Müller, 1786) Nitzsch, 1827" are not typically used in zoology, but do appear often in the protist literature. It might be helpful to establish a policy to help avoid or resolve any disputes like this. Dyanega (talk) 23:54, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Good point. Although for protists it usually is "(Author, year) Author, year", it's currently not solidifed as a policy. I should write it in the WikiProject page. — Snoteleks (talk) 13:15, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

@Snoteleks: "[Taxon] taxa by rank" implies to me a container category (one that doesn't contain articles directly, only subcategories), which seems to be how they have mostly been treated even if they have not been explicitly marked as container categories. How do you plant to include unranked taxa in a "[Taxon] taxa" category? Directly, or would there be a subcategory of Category:Eukaryote unranked clades? Do you plan to directly include articles for taxa at minor ranks (infraorder, superfamily, subclass, etc.), or create subcategories for every minor rank?

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Plants/Categorization#Taxonomic_rank_categories is the only documentation I know of that gives guidance for "[Taxon] [rank]" categories. They are supposed to be separate from "[Taxon]" categories. That guidance is quite consistently followed for plants; other projects are not obliged to follow that guidance, but generally do. If there are "[Taxon] [rank]" categories across the board where [rank] goes down to species, what goes in "Taxon" categories? E.g., Amborella is in Category:Monotypic angiosperm genera (a "[Taxon] [rank]" category) and Category:Angiosperms (a "[Taxon]" category). With a proliferation of "[Taxon] taxa by rank" categories, I think there is a likelihood that editors will get confused and end up putting articles only in "[Taxon] [rank]" categories. "[Taxon]" categories are the basic categories that have been around a very long time on Wikipedia. The "[Taxon] [rank]" category is more recent (but still pretty old), and is a secondary way to categories

"Several minor groups ommitted"/"Several major groups ommitted". That is fine by me, but you can't control what other editors might do. Any categories you empty might be recreated by somebody who hasn't read this discussion and isn't aware your intention to restrict categories to groups with 2,000+ species. Caftaric created categories for every node in the animal phylogenetic tree above phylum. Getting to Category:Animals from Category:Annelids is a crazy mess (once you get to Spiralia, you can either go Protostome unranked clades->Animal unranked clades->Animal taxa by rank->Animal taxa->Animals or Protostome unranked clades->Protostome taxa by rank->Protostome taxa->Protostomes->Nephrozoa->Bilaterians->ParaHoxozoa->Animals); Caftaric's system does break the assumption that "taxa by rank" categories are container categories. I would prefer to have each animal phylum as a subcategory of Animals.

"Paraphyletic taxa deprecated". That is again fine by me, but you're working on categories for Protista, which is paraphyletic. Do you have a plan to ensure that plants/fungi/animals aren't going to end up in subcategories under Protista?

"Creation of "[Taxon] species"". I'm not necessarily I opposed, but "[Taxon] species" haven't really been a thing on Wikipedia (at the time of Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2020_February_6#Category:Bromeliaceae_species, I wasn't aware of any other "[Taxon] species" category). The absence of species categories probably stems from the basic category system being "[Taxon]" categories, not "[Taxon] [rank]" categories, where the finest scale "Taxon" categories have been categories for genera. There are 2000 Carex species and close to 1000 articles in Category:Carex. Using your threshold of 2000 species, should there be a Category:Carex species (and what would then belong in Category:Carex? "[Taxon] species" will need to be maintained and populated. I regularly find new fungus species articles that haven't been placed in Category:Fungus species; I add that category when I notice it is missing, but I am sure I sometimes fail to notice it's absence. Is anybody else (Esculenta?) making sure that the fungus species category has every relevant article as new articles are created? If that kind of ongoing maintenance isn't happening, the category is not too useful for "quantif[ing] how many species are represented in Wikipedia". Plantdrew (talk) 22:03, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Ongoing maintenance is fun! I've found that several others have been using the fungus species category, so it seems to have caught on. I admit to having missed quite a few fungus species in my initial sweep (I mostly found species using the Category:Fungi described in year category, and of course not all of the fungus species articles have this cat yet), but I'll get to them eventually. Esculenta (talk) 22:37, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

@Plantdrew to answer to each question:

1. I plan to place unranked clades directly in the "[Taxon] taxa" category. Ideally, if enough suborders and such are present, a "[Taxon] suborders" category could be made, as is the case for example with category:Apicomplexa suborders.
2. I think "[Taxon]" categories, at least for protists, are a bit of a catch-all right now. I'm not sure if I even want to modify them. Pages whose titles are not strictly the taxon name (e.g., chrompodellid, ochrophyte, centrohelid and other common names) definitely belong there, but I don't feel the need to exclude other pages from "[Taxon]" categories.
3. Precisely that's why the category redirect template is so useful.
4. To avoid plants appearing, I am placing all Archaeplastida taxa except plants in "Green algae taxa", "Red algae taxa" and "Glaucophyte taxa" (Rhodelphidia and Picozoa would go directly to "Protist taxa"). Initially I made a category for "Opisthokont protist species", but it felt wrong, so I merged it with "Opisthokont species", which includes Fungi and Animal species, but that's the only category where this happens.
5. This threshold of 2,000 species is specifically for protists, so I cannot speak for WP Animals, since they deal with hyper-diversified genera. Just like Esculenta does for fungi, I try to ensure that no uncategorized protist species remain. It is ongoing, of course, because I found out there are many species whose genera don't even exist as articles. But that can be said for many other categories.

— Snoteleks (talk) 14:39, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Cecidotaxa, cecidogenus, cecidospecies, etc.

It may be too early yet to apply these new terms to Wikipedia (possibly?), but I thought I may post information on them here anyway for those who are interested: a recent article by a number of ichnologists (Bertling et al. (2022)) appears to be proposing (among other things) a new group of parataxa for fossils of bioclaustrations (defined as including galls, embedment structures, blisters, so I understand?), which are considered separate from trace fossils (ichnotaxa) but said to be governed under the ICZN code. They are called "cecidotaxa", singular "cecidotaxon".

The authors also propose the abbreviations "cfam.", "cgen." and "csp.", short for "cecidofamily", "cecidogenus" and "cecidospecies", respectively, similar to the names for ranks in trace fossil classification. These rank names and their abbreviations are already being used in a few academic papers since this article, such as in [3].

If we were to start applying this concept to articles on Wikipedia, Chaetosalpinx and Burrinjuckia for instance are considered "cecidogenera" now according to these authors. (They were mentioned by Wisshak et al. (2019) in a list of names for bioclaustration structures not considered ichnotaxa.) Monster Iestyn (talk) 21:29, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

To put it another way, there are now ichnotaxa (for trace fossils), ootaxa (for egg fossils) and cecidotaxa (for bioclaustrations). Monster Iestyn (talk) 21:32, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Who is Michael Fibiger and why is the general public unaware of him?

Per Category:Taxa named by Michael Fibiger, he's done a lot for his community. Perhaps too much? I don't know, but was hoping someone more creative here might be able to string together a word or two about he and his apparent great deal. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:48, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

There's an obituary here. Seems like he was actually a psychologist for a dayjob and was a lepidopterist as an avocation. Here are the results for him on scholar [4]. He might pass WP:NPROF for his lepidopterist work, but I am not sure. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:23, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I've always thought there's something oddly psychological about how humans see moths and this confirms that bias (for me). Thanks for the quick dig! Also not sure it's quite enough yet, but a fine start toward understanding the single source of (what I assume are most of) those 232 apparently passable articles. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:43, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Anyone interested in a quick review of my featured article nomination?

I know it's obscure, but here is my attempt at all that is known about this small animal Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Heptamegacanthus/archive1 Mattximus (talk) 19:36, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikidata identifiers for new Species Files databases

I've made a proposal to add nine new Species Files identifiers to Wikidata so they can be added to {{taxonbar}}s. The new Species Files cover the polyneopteran orders Zoraptera, Dermaptera, Plecoptera, Grylloblattodea, Mantophasmatodea, Embioptera and "Isoptera", as well as hemipteran groups Aphidomorpha and Coleorrhyncha.

Please contribute to the discussion at d:Wikidata:Property_proposal/Identifiers_for_Species_Files_databases. I think support has to be added to each proposal separately. —  Jts1882 | talk  12:55, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Feed for new articles

Hello, sorry if this has been asked before, but is there a feed for newly created articles that are within the bounds of this project or Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals/WikiProject Plants/ WikiProject Fungi. I would like to be able to see what new genus/species articles are created in particular. Thanks in advance, -- Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 19:53, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

@Classicwiki: Yes, they're found at User:AlexNewArtBot#Biology and medicine. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 20:12, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

@Trilletrollet, thank you! Would it be helpful to link this on the WikiProject page somewhere? -- Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 20:28, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

There are a couple there I wasn't aware of. Classicwiki, the links you want there are the ones that say "Search result". You can watchlist any of the pages at the "Search result" link and see when they are updated each day. All of them rely on keywords which might not be present in any given article (false negatives, which are pretty rare), or which may be present in an irrelevant article (false positives, which are more common). There isn't anything designed to pick up animals in general, so any animal that isn't a mollusc, arthropod or chordate may slip through the cracks. Nor is there anything for protists or bacteria (but the log for plants usually picks up any new bacteria articles due to including the family ending -aceae as a keyword, which is also used in bacterial nomenclature).

User:AlexNewArtBot/SpeciesSearchResult is intended to pick up species in any group of organisms, but does not pick up taxa at any other rank (subspecies, genus, family, etc.). Plantdrew (talk) 20:30, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

@Plantdrew, that is a shame that the results are problematic.

Prior to asking, I tried to see if there was a way to find them via WikiProject template transclusions. I used What Links Here tool for WikiProject Animals and sorted by last edited. Which is insufficient as it only shows last edited, and not newly created articles.

I could see a more centralized feed of every new taxonomic article (species, genus, family, etc.) being really useful for reviewing new pages and addressing problems. -- Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 20:46, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

@Classicwiki:, I use the AlexNewArtBot reports to find new taxon articles that don't have any WikiProject banners yet. Most days there are 5-10 of those. I also do a search every week or two for articles that have one of the taxobox templates without any WikiProject banner (to pickup what slips by AlexNewArtBot, e.g. non-arthropod/chordate/mollusc animals).

I've thought about creating a rule-set for AlexNewArtBot that would pick up all taxa, but I haven't learned the syntax of the rule-sets. If I knew how to do it, it would be something like: full points for any taxobox template, high points for "species", "genus" or "family" near "-idae/-aceae", and some points for broad terms for higher level groups of organisms (plant, fungus, insect). Plantdrew (talk) 21:10, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

A non-species taxon list could have title searches for appropriate suffixes (-idae\W, -aceae\W, -ales\W, -iformes\W, -inae\W, etc). If 10 is the threshold, both the taxobox matches and title matches could be given 5 points. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:15, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Is there any way that this bot could add WikiProject Protista to its list? — Snoteleks (talk) 00:14, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @Bamyers99. -- Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 01:28, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

You need a file of search terms in regex, e.g. User:AlexNewArtBot/Plants or User:AlexNewArtBot/Birds as described at How to add feeds to the new article bot I couldn't work out whether there is a file listing the pages for the bot to use or if the files is picked up automatically. There is a list to inform the bot at User:AlexNewArtBot/Master —  Jts1882 | talk  07:00, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

A downside to automatic taxoboxes is that strings for higher taxa that would be present in a manual taxobox may not be present at all in an article with an automatic taxobox. That makes the potential rule sets for things like animals and protists much more complicated. Articles for animal genera/species generally do not include the term "animal" anywhere in prose, but describe the article subject as being a member of some less inclusive group. I think "protist" also rarely appears in articles about protist genera/species. How many different terms might be used to describe a member of the SAR supergroup? There will be quite a few, and that's just one group of protists. Going back to animals, take echinoderms. Echinoderm species are almost never described as animals, and usually won't be described as echinoderms. They might be described as a "starfish", "sand dollar", "sea cucumber", "sea urchin", "brittle star", or "crinoid", and the are other names for each of those groups that might appear instead (e.g. "sea star", "ophiuroid", "sea lily"). And that's just one animal phylum.

The rule-set for arthropods (User:AlexNewArtBot/Arthropods) is probably the one that covers the greatest diversity of terms that might appear in an article. And it looks like it is relying pretty heavily on the presence of categories that might not actually be present (maybe I don't understand the syntax correctly, but as I understand it, the rule-set looks for "centipede" and "millipede" as categories and not as terms that would occur in prose). Plantdrew (talk) 15:55, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

The match /Category:[^\]]*millipedes/ looks for a category with any text ("not ]") before "millipedes" so picks up "Category:Cave millipedes", "Category:Bioluminescent millipedes", etc. I'm surprised it doesn't also look for millipede in the text. Good point about automated taxoboxes; most of the search term files were set up before they were introduced. You are right that finding the protists won't be easy due to the high diversity. —  Jts1882 | talk  16:55, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

@Plantdrew, @Jts1882, this is why I was initially thinking of targeting talk pages. Sure you will miss out on the new articles without talk pages/missing the associated WikiProject, but hopefully they will be tagged eventually. It is a very uniform string to target: WikiProject Animals, WikiProject Protista, etc. Is it possible for the bot to target article talk pages? -- Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 19:44, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

@Classicwiki: I can't see anything that would allow you to target the search to talk pages.

However, perhaps this Petscan search is helpful. It looks for template "WikiProject Protista" (set in Templates and Links) on main space talk pages and finds "Only pages created during the above time window" (in this case May 1st, set in Page Properties). —  Jts1882 | talk  13:15, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Taxa named by ... et al.?

We have categories for Taxa named by [individual author]. What do we do with taxa that have multiple authors, or that have so many authors that are often authored as [first author] et al.? Do we only refer to the first author, or to all of them, each in their own category of course? — Snoteleks (talk) 10:19, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Each in their own category (if every author even needs a category), it's pretty rare that the exact combination and order of authors have published multiple names, so such category would usually contain a single article, which is of little use. FunkMonk (talk) 11:19, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Honestly not that rare when it comes to insects and spiders. Lots of species means publications including multiple new taxa at the same time are pretty common even now. For the more niche groups, the number of experts also tends to be fairly low, resulting in a good few cases of the same authors publishing multiple articles together. Probably a lot less common in more widely-studied yet less speciose parts of the tree of life, though.

But yeah, I'd say that generally speaking, there is little benefit in creating layers of author-combination taxa categories on top of individual author categories when multi-categorizing the articles works just as well. Basically the only exceptions I could think of from top of my head are a few historical cases where all taxa named by all involved authors were named in a single shared publication, and that's a sufficiently rare situation it's really not worth making an exception for (since it'll likely result in the non-exception multi-author categories getting created as well by well-meaning folks who don't realize it's an exceptional case). AddWittyNameHere 12:05, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Even when it's the same authors, they might not be listed in the exact same order for every publication, but yeah, either way, list them each as their own category, that also gives a better impression of what a single author has published on. FunkMonk (talk) 13:37, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

I have a similar question: which author categories should we use in cases where the taxon's current valid name cites multiple separate authors? For example, would "Zanha africana (Radlk.) Exell" go in Category:Taxa named by Ludwig Adolph Timotheus Radlkofer, Category:Taxa named by Arthur Wallis Exell, or both? Or in the case of "Orobanche alba Steph. ex Willd.", should we use Category:Taxa named by Franz Stephani, Category:Taxa named by Carl Ludwig Willdenow, or both? Ethmostigmus (talk | contribs) 03:31, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

@Ethmostigmus:, following the principles of Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Description in year categories, Zanha africana should be in Category:Taxa named by Ludwig Adolph Timotheus Radlkofer (and should be in the year category 1907, not 1966). And Orobanche alba should be in the category for Willd., not Steph. (see Author_citation_(botany)#Usage_of_the_term_"ex").

However, the principles of Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Description in year categories are not consistently followed in Wikipedia's categorization, especially not for organisms that aren't plants. Plantdrew (talk) 15:58, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps we could come up with a consensus. I suggest that basionym redirect pages should belong to those categories with the original author and year of description, while new combinations (i.e. the article itself) should belong to the emending author and emendation year. Many protist taxa follow this rule, at least when it comes to year categories. This is the same as what already happens with monotypic taxa, essentially, because it's just a different kind of "synonym" – the monotypic order redirect has its own categories for author and year that may be different from the family article. — Snoteleks (talk) 19:25, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Cheers for the WP:Plants link, that's very helpful! I was scouring this WP for exactly that kind of guidance - turns out I was just looking in the wrong place :P

I think the use of the term "named by" in these categories is somewhat problematic, given that the person who gave a taxon its current name isn't necessarily the person who described it. Personally, when I first saw the "taxa named by x" categories, I interpreted it as referring to the individual that gave the taxon its current name, not necessarily the individual who described the taxon. But that may just be me being a bit too literal/pedantic.

I'm quite keen on Snotleks's suggestion to categorise botanical synonym redirects in the way protist taxa do, but I'm also wondering there should be some change to the way we apply these categories to make that distinction between "named" and "described" more clear. I think there's room for improvement here (it would be excellent if this WP could come up with some standardised guidelines for categorising all taxa!) but for now, applying categories based on the earliest valid description will do just fine. Ethmostigmus (talk | contribs) 04:38, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Discussion on notability

There is a discussion on the notability of species at Wikipedia talk:Notability#Biology that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Choess (talk) 02:27, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Titles for virus species

Every virus species has been renamed in the last few years. I've started a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Viruses#Titles_for_species_articles to get a sense for whether we should be using the current species names for the titles of articles. Wikipedia has ~1000 articles on virus species. Plantdrew (talk) 18:22, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to merge Neodiapsida into Diapsida

Hi, I've proposed to merge Neodiapsida into Diapsida, since the two are largely synonymous. Discussion can be found here. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 13:49, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

cite iucn

{{make cite iucn}} will now create a {{cite iucn}} template from the IUCN's Green Status assessment citation. Here is an example from IUCN's Iberian Lynx page:

{{make cite iucn |Ortiz, F.J.S., Carlton, E., Lanz, T. & Breitenmoser, U. 2023. Lynx pardinus (Green Status assessment). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2023: e.T12520A1252020241.Accessed on 30 June 2024.}}

{{cite iucn |author=Ortiz, F.J.S. |author2=Carlton, E. |author3=Lanz, T. |author4=Breitenmoser, U. |year=2023 |type=Green Status assessment |title=''Lynx pardinus'' |volume=2023 |page=e.T12520A1252020241 |doi= |access-date=30 June 2024}}

Ortiz, F.J.S.; Carlton, E.; Lanz, T.; Breitenmoser, U. (2023). "Lynx pardinus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Green Status assessment). 2023: e.T12520A1252020241. Retrieved 30 June 2024.

Category:Cite IUCN maint lists ten articles that have urls that {{cite iucn}} does not recognize as valid (valid urls link to a species assessment page). Grouped by unknown url, these articles are:

|url=https://www.iucnredlist.org/en – reader hostile; it is pointless to link to the IUCN red list as a whole; links should be specific to the species

• Garter snake
• Guzmania teuscheri
• Japanese rice fish
• Plectostoma sciaphilum
• Sarcosoma globosum
• Silky short-tailed bat

|url=https://www.iucnredlist.org/ – reader hostile; as above

• Eremias persica
• Oval electric ray
• South Georgia shag

|url=http://www.iucnredlist.org/search – reader hostile;

• Butia campicola

I intend to modify Module:Cite IUCN to promote unknown url messaging from maintenance to error status.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:54, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Another maintenance message to be promoted to error status is no identifier. At this writing, only one article has a {{cite iucn}} template emitting that message:

• List of carnivorans by population

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:15, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

In preparation for the above, I have refactored the error messaging code in Module:Cite IUCN. Report any anomalies here.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:23, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Ongoing discussions about policy and guidelines relating to notability of species

This Wikiproject is likely to be interested in the following discussions: Wikipedia talk:Notability#Biology and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Species notability. Crossroads ^-talk- 02:01, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Reposting these at WP:PALEO and WP:DINO The Morrison Man (talk) 12:23, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Update: I have posted a draft proposal at WP:Notability (species). It is not yet time to vote. However, if you see errors (e.g., the wrong set of taxonomists) or think it is unclear, please post your comments on the talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Bamboo coral taxonomic revision

I was trying to find out what bamboo whip coral were (turns out this term just means whip-shaped bamboo coral, and does not refer to a particular species/genus/etc.), when I read a study saying that the family Isididae (what we currently have for bamboo coral) has been shown to be paraphyletic and been split into four separate families. MarineSpecies references the article establishing the revision on the respective pages. I added a statement that it had been shown to paraphyletic. I think the sources are adequate, but because I don't know much about taxonomy, I'm trying to double check here: should the taxonomy be updated? Mrfoogles (talk) 06:43, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

It seems that many of the articles here are cited to MarineSpecies, and it seems reliable, so I've started trying to update a few things. Based on this, though, probably a lot needs to be done Mrfoogles (talk) 02:46, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Twitter coverage

Yesterday I created a social media account for sharing WikiProject Protista's news, if anyone is interested the link is @WikiProtista. I plan on sharing mainly two things: 1) newly created articles, with at least a brief mention, and 2) newly GA-nominated articles, with a more elaborate thread. All suggestions are welcome! I also made a custom icon which I will soon upload to Wikimedia. — Snoteleks (talk) 20:20, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Don't have a twitter but personally I'll probably look at it if any of it's on Mastodon or something more easily accessible (Twitter makes you log in these days) Mrfoogles (talk) 02:19, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm not accustomed to Mastodon, I would like to make an account there but it seems like I have to choose a server? Any advice? — Snoteleks (talk) 13:20, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

A web search found this directory of servers. Either I'm not finding the correct search term, or there isn't a relevant specialised server. The nearest I'm finding is Scholar.Social. You could always use a general server. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:02, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Displaying domain in plant/fungus/animal taxoboxes

Manual taxoboxes for plants, animals and fungi don't display domain. Automatic taxoboxes for these groups hadn't displayed domains until a year ago, when an edit request was made at Template talk:Taxonomy/Amorphea that resulted in domain being displayed for animals and fungi. The intent of the edit was to display domain for some non-plant/fungus/animal eukaryotes, and taxoboxes for non-p/f/a eukaryotes have generally displayed domain.

I don't have any strong opinion on whether taxoboxes for p/f/a eukaryotes should display domain, but I do think it should be consistent. Plants do not currently display domain. Should plants display domain? If so, we could get rid of Template:Taxonomy/Eukaryota/displayed and just use Template:Taxonomy/Eukaryota. If domain should only be displayed for eukaryotes that don't belong to one of the three big kingdoms, some other /displayed templates will be necessary to keep animals and fungi from displaying domain. Plantdrew (talk) 18:17, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I also don't have a strong opinion. I can see a small case for displaying or not displaying it. On the plus side it is a link to the larger web of knowledge. Negative is that is adds a bit of clutter that may not be useful to readers. I come down (very) slightly on the side of removing the domain from animals and fungi, but I agree that for consistency across taxa plants should be the same as other eukaryotes. Was there a discussion at the time of the change? 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:11, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

There wasn't any discussion at the time of the change. I asked Snoteleks if they had intended to have fungi and animals display domain when they made the edit request, and suggested that was something that should be discussed here. Snoteleks replied that it wasn't intentional, and I understood that they were going to initiate a discussion here.

I do find the impact of the change on pageviews of Eukaryote interesting. It was running 2-3k per day before and is now in the range of 4-5k per day.Plantdrew (talk) 00:09, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

That is something I did not even think to look at, thanks. 50-100%ish more traffic is nothing to be dismissed. Plants won't add much to that, but maybe it should be on all the taxoboxes. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 00:47, 23 July 2024 (UTC)