Talk:Florida cottonmouth

Untitled

Although I'm happy that somebody took the trouble to write this article, I'm disappointed that the scientific name was not used for the title of the page. I'm aware that my opinion is at odds with of Wikipedia's policy on this issue, but as far as I'm concerned that policy can only work for birds at best, where the American Ornithologists' Union has an officially accepted common name for each scientific name (and even then Wikipedia does not always use the same common names).

The result is that Wikipedia's naming guideline, which is to use the most common common name for every article and only to use the scientific name if there is no common name, reduces this naming process to a popularity contest.

Florida Cottonmouth is a good enough example. I used to live in Florida, but in all the years I was there I never heard anybody ever refer to this snake as a Florida cottonmouth. About half the time people would call it a cottonmouth, and other times times they would call it a water moccasin. Therefore, I seriously doubt that Florida Cottonmouth is the most common common name for this species where it actually occurs: in Florida.

Where is Florida cottonmouth the most common common name? Only in literature and on the Internet, and only because somebody decided there should be a new common name for it after it was described as Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti by Howard Gloyd in a scientific article he wrote in 1969.

So, what is the correct common name -- the most common common name -- for this article? As far as I can see, there's no easy way to tell, but if some guy in Florida kills a snake in his back yard and decides to use Wikipedia to look it up, chances are he's not going to look for "Florida cottonmouth".

Which is why in my opinion, we should be using scientific names for the names of these articles with lots of redirects and disambiguation pages for the different common names. It's much harder for anyone to argue about what these scientific names should be. And, if there is any arguing to be done, we can leave that up to the experts. --Jwinius 13:47, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to have to respectfully disgree with you on a few things, at least in theory:

Florida Cottonmouth seems to be a very well accepted common name here in Florida. Yes several others are used, but the 2 competing but mostly identical "official" lists in the US, plus I believe all the recent field guides I have agree on "Florida Cottonmouth". All the keepers I know here use either "Florida Cottonmouth" or the latin (Greek actually) when they want to be specific.

As for what the guy who kills a snake in his back yard searches for, it certainly won't include "Agkistrodon", so I'm not sure how that's relevant. Besides, most down here don't bother because they're absolutely sure that any vaguely gray, black, brown or green snake within 200 miles of a puddle is a cottonmouth, whether it's in the water, underground or in a tree. They "know a cottonmouth when they see one".

However, as for your overall point, I tend to agree that the scientific name should be used, but in anything other than a academic setting, if you have 5 people in the room there probably won't be 2 who agree. Things are somewhat complicated by the fact that, in reality, there is no one universally accepted list of scientific names either, and the lists that exist are subject to change.

We have a saying in the computer industry: The best thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. Lfishel 20:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

On that level I admit you have a point. At the time I was frustrated that this article could not be renamed and unfortunately couldn't think of anything else better to say. Yes, it's true that there is no universally accepted snake taxonomy, but as far as that's concerned ITIS is about as good as it gets. The problem is more that if you accept that one specific common name is good enough for an article title, then before you know it all the rest are up for discussion as well and the result will be a mess. When using common names instead, one typical drawback is that editors are much less inclined to make any use of the taxonomic hierarchy to describe the characteristics that the various groups of plants, animals or other life forms have in common. Consequently, you get repetition and lots of inconsistencies. No surprisingly, this particular article is no exception. So, for me the choice is clear, although it has occurred to me that I may be wasting my efforts in the wrong wiki. --Jwinius 23:05, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Ack! I had totally missed the point that the main article was under the scientific name and this one was under the common name. Forget everything I said. That's just silly. (But you already knew that).

If it's a matter of it being technically impossible to rename an article (I'm pretty new here), perhaps a new article could be created, everything from here copied to that one and replaced here by a page that just says "see xxx" and any other references changed over?

Does that violate the rules? Is this an ongoing debate that I just haven't stumbled across yet and someone else would just change it back and add a note about your mother? Or is it just that it's already one way in half the articles and another way in the other half? Lfishel 03:03, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

The way to prevent someone from renaming your page (executing a page move) to a particular name, is to first create a redirect page with that name, and then to modify (add information to) that redirect page. (Simply creating a redirect page with more information on it than the redirect alone may be enough, but I've not tested that). In my experience, if that last step is omitted, you'll still be able to perform a page move and swap names back and forth between the article title and the redirect title. An administrator can always force a page move anyway, but in this case they didn't want to help because what I was doing (using a scientific name even though a perfectly good common name is available) is still considered a violation of the Manual of Style.

Anyway, the easy way out is simply to removing the redirect line from the Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti and add material to it, possibly moving some information there from here (although that wouldn't be much). The last step would be to replace all of the information on this page with a redirect to the new Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti article. The only problem is that this technique is not considered polite at Wikipedia, since the original page's edit history and talk page are lost in the process (well, it remains part of the old page). Not that, in this case, this is much of an issue anymore: if you check this article's edit history you'll see that the original and main contributer, Monkeyfishninja, has been inactive for almost a year, so I don't think he'd mind.

As for style, as you may have noticed, I follow my own and have applied it to virtually the entire viper section (starts at Viperidae with over 200 articles and over 2,000 redirects). I made an attempt to explain my motivations on my user page, my talk page, and on a separate page about my style. Some of my latest work has involved the the creation of additional categories for synonymy and common names. I've also created such parallel categories for Rattlesnakes and intend to create them for Pit vipers, although the latter may have to be split up first for practical reasons (new world and old world pit vipers?).

Ongoing debate? Not in this particular case, but on the larger scale, the scientific names vs. common names debate still appears on a more or less regular basis here and especially here (put those pages on your watchlist). Some related discussions have also taken place here. Not that I pay too much attention to those pages anymore. I don't think this issue has ever come close to a vote either, since those in favor of using scientific names are always in a minority. What's more, the debates themselves are usually pretty polarized and sometimes our opponents don't even bother to argue with anything except "No!" I've also noticed that some of those same people don't really contribute to any Tree Of Life articles and suspect that some of them are actually children. I find it depressing that these people are not only tolerated, but are actually allowed to have so much influence.

The ratio of common name to scientific name article titles varies. In the Category:Snakes, which does not include any of the viper articles I've worked on, you'll see that most articles use scientific names, even though they were started by lots of different people. On the other hand, Category:Amphibians of Australia was done by someone who is actually taxonomically aware, but simply does not believe in using scientific names for article titles, so those are all common names. Others such as Category:Sharks and Category:Parrots are the same. The botanists, however, in for example Category:Cupressaceae, are doing a much better job. So, I guess it depends in part on the hobbyist culture involved (snake people seem more likely to use scientific names than parrot people), but even more on the individuals tending the articles. --Jwinius 13:40, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move to Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti. Thanks for pointing out the discussion at User talk:Andrewa/systematic names, etc. I am never likely to be a contributor to these articles, but the arguments in favour of scientific names, categorising common name redirects if need be to address DeLarge's point, seem far too persuasive to be easily ignored. Angus McLellan (Talk) 18:15, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

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Florida Cottonmouth → Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti – In order for this page to fit in with the rest of this series or articles, it seems appropriate to me to have the name changed to Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti. If there are no objections, or if I can form a consensus towards this end, I plan to request a page move later this week. --Jwinius (talk) 23:24, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

No objections. Good to have you back btw. (The Red Cloud (talk) 10:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC))

Thanks. :-) I just have to make sure I don't become all manic again, spending 12-16 hour days here for weeks on end. Everything in moderation, right? Cheers, --Jwinius (talk) 12:03, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Usually we have an article at its common name if it has one and it's reasonably unambiguous. Having said that there are many snakes and the scientific name has clear taxonomic advantages. No objections to moving this. --Tony Sidaway 12:34, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Given the existence of Category:American pit vipers by common name, Category:Asian pit vipers by common name, and Category:True vipers by common name, I'd suggest that the whole lot is at odds with WP:COMMONNAME. We shouldn't be redirecting like this without good reason; it should be the common name in the title, scientific name in the article. Is there a specific disambiguation problem or an existing naming convention that has required the articles to be named this way? --DeLarge (talk) 11:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The more pertinent guideline that I believe you're referring to is WP:TOL#Article titles. However, although this concept may seem like a good idea for presentation purposes, it's a major drag when you're trying to organize hundreds, let alone thousands of articles according to their proper taxonomic classification -- an area where scientific names have a clear advantage. The botany people agree, and in my view this is also true for snakes, most species of which are obscure in the public mind and go by many common names. So far, this departure from the TOL guidelines, which "are only suggestions", has made it much easier to manage of all the names involved, helps to avoid duplication, and makes people more aware of the taxonomy. Enough good reason if you ask me. --Jwinius (talk) 14:55, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I think this discussion has some more general policy implications... see User talk:Andrewa/systematic names. Andrewa (talk) 17:13, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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No longer a subspecies

The Floridan cottonmouth is no longer recognized a subspecies of Agkistrodon P. It is now its own distinct species. This article needs to have the title changed to Agkistrodon Conanti and its content edited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MadBotanist (talk • contribs) 04:29, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 10 July 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Lennart97 (talk) 19:21, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

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Agkistrodon piscivorus conanti → Florida cottonmouth – WP:COMMONNAME (already redirects here, is well accepted as the common name, and is unambiguous). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 07:28, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Species vs subspecies debate not as clearcut as article says

To my knowledge there is one single paper that found evidence for the Florida cottonmouth being one species "burbrInk, F. t., and t. j. guIher. 2015. Considering gene flow when using coalescent methods to delimit lineages of North American pitvipers of the genus Agkistrodon. Zool. J. Linnean Soc. 173:505–526." all other sources used in this article for it being a species are guide books and databases that all cite Burbrink and another primary source that came to their conclusion or a single secondary review published after their paper. I have found a few sources disagreeing with Burbrink and Non taxonomic papers published seem split on calling the Florida cottonmouth a species or subspecies. I think this article should reflect that the species vs subspecies argument is not resolved. Always beleive in hope (talk) 22:29, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

The references that were dismissed and deleted as “guide books and databases” are authoritative and mainstream sources authored and edited by PhD herpetologists following the current taxonomy (Reptile Database: and Peterson Field Guide: Robert Powell). Taxonomy does not require more than “one single paper” for the description of a new species or subsequent taxonomic changes of any taxon. Most taxonomic changes are made in a single publication. It is the norm. Burbrink and Guiher (2015) was published in a long established, internationally circulated, peer reviewed journal, and it is the current and standing review. Until someone publishes a proper taxonomic review resurrecting the subspecies, Wikipedia should follow the current taxonomy, which is based on current theories and data (phylogenetics & DNA), not mid-twentieth century knowledge.

On the Talk:Agkistrodon piscivorus page you stated: “As off topic rant, I don't like that the bar for species has moved from produces viable offspring to something more vague.”

However, it is the other way around: the definition of a species has always been vague and problematic, and now the bar needs to be moved to agree with phylogenetics and a consensus among scientists. Reproductive isolation, or “produces viable offspring”, never fit every case in nature and was never universally accepted as a definition for a species. Debates concerning the definition of a species, and the validity of subspecies in taxonomy, are not about cottonmouths or the integrity or methods used in Burbrink and Guiher’s publication. It is a much larger discussion on the validity of subspecies as a taxonomic rank in all zoology and I don’t know if a Florida cottonmouth article is the place for that debate. Although the concept of subspecies as a taxonomic rank still has some defenders, I think it would be safe to say it has fallen from favor in the last 20 or 30 years, and Burbrink and Guiher (2015) is only one among hundreds of taxonomic papers exemplifying the pervasive trend of eliminating subspecies.

The paper you cited, de Queiroz (2020), is not a peer reviewed taxonomic review. It is a letter to the editor of a journal and it does not exactly support the validity of subspecies. Queiroz (2020) avoids using the term subspecies, and instead uses “incompletely separated lineages” and proposes “a revised concept of subspecies”, in other words “moving the bar” as you say, to reconcile the controversy. Queiroz (2020) explicitly says “Although I use the previously mentioned Agkistrodon cases as examples, my proposal has broad applicability within and beyond herpetology.” Queiroz (2020) explains it is an old problem, discussed by Darwin in his On the Origin of Species.

The Linnaean system of binomial nomenclature had over a hundred years of usage before Darwin published his theory of evolution. The Linnaean system was intended to be a simple way of categorizing forms of life that were understood to be fixed, stable units of Biblical creation. We now know species are not stable but are evolving in a perpetual state of flux. With advances in phylogenetic theories and DNA to test them, taxonomists are not simply putting animals into categories anymore, they are tracing their evolution through time, identifying clades with common ancestors, and building trees of relationships. Reconciling the Linnaean system with phylogenetics is a fundamental part of what the arguments are about, not cottonmouths or Burbrink and Guiher (2015).

I don’t think the Florida cottonmouth article is the place to hash out these issues. However, if you feel strongly about addressing validity of subspecies here, I suggest you write a separate paragraph explaining some of the current issues in taxonomy, and just not deleting references that don’t support your view. WiLaFa (talk) 06:52, 22 October 2023 (UTC)