Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life

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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)

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)

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)