Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology/Archive 3

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New template for talk pages, expecially the larger ones

Unresolved

Some pages, such as this one have lots of post, and it requires some work to see what has been answered or acknowledged. therefore I have helped make the {{Unanswered}} template that can be put above a section allowing one to quickly glimpse what has been answered. If you were waiting for an answer but never got one as the post in somewhere in the middle tag it! please voice any queries or comments in the talk page of Template:Unanswered (links, talk) and not here. Cheers --Squidonius (talk) 15:12, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Homo floresiensis

I have nominated Homo floresiensis for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Thank you. Jan.Kamenicek (talk) 21:32, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Pineal gland

WikiProject Medicine, WikiProject Anatomy, and WikiProject Biology have all rated this article as Start-Class on the quality scale. I wonder if it might not have earned a higher rating now? - Hordaland (talk) 13:48, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Biology help needed

In the Wikipedia article Dog breed an editor is making the claim that dog breeds "meet the criteria for subspecies". All dogs are the same subspecies, so how can that be true? I'm not sure how to respond to this. Sorry to intrude if this is not a good place to ask.--Hafwyn (talk) 19:50, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

The best solution would be to find a reliable source that states that they are all the same subspecies, and to challenge your opponent to back up his assertion with a similarly reliable source. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:25, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Naming of article about the human fetus

Over at Talk:Fetus#Disambiguation, there's been a bit of discussion about page names which resonates with a couple of sections above.

I'll sum up the disagreement here, then invite comment below.

  • There is one article about the human fetus, and another article about the fetus in general.
    • This is necessary because it is possible to go into quite some depth about the human fetus (and because we're human, we're interested in that), but this content doesn't really belong in an article about the biology of the fetal stage - the overlap is very limited. Consensus for this situation was reached at Talk:Fetus.
  • There is some disagreement about what to name the two articles. Some possibilities are:
    • Human fetus and Fetus [my original preference]
    • Fetus and Fetus (biology) [the current situation]
    • Fetus and prenatal development [or some equivalent - i.e. the fetus itself doesn't warrant an article of its own, but the human article does].
  • If the title of 'fetus' is changed to 'human fetus', it may be worth considering other articles such as 'pregnancy', which currently only deals with human pregnancy.

To summarise the arguments and their counter-arguments so far:

  • Fetus should redirect to Human fetus, because most traffic to Fetus is directed there
    • This seems to be true; it's been moved around a bit but Fetus (biology) isn't getting much traffic: [1] , [2]
    • Therefore Fetus (biology) seems like a reasonable name to keep, with 'Fetus' ending up with content about the human fetus. stats
  • Change is bad because it involves a lot of work
    • Bots and the new Wikimedia double-redirect software can take care of this
    • If fetus continues to link to the article about the human fetus, then no work is needed
  • Titles should reflect the content of the article
    • In the current fetus page, it is necessary to explain at the start of the article that the scope is restricted to the human fetus. This would be implicit if the title was 'human fetus', and would avoid confusing people interested in the (say) onychophoran or elephant fetus.
    • Leaving the page about the human fetus at fetus implies a false generality.

I hope that that does justice to all the viewpoints; I invite comments below. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 02:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

I don't think we need so many articles covering non-human gestation and pre-natal development, so I think that the non-human aspects of the following articles ought to be merged: Prenatal development (non-human) and Gestation and Fetus (biology) and pregnancy (mammals). When there is enough content to justify sub-articles, then sub-articles could be created. What the title of the merged article should be is an open question. Perhaps Gestational development of non-humans? I don't think we really need an article titled Fetus (non-humans) or Fetus (biology), because the fetal stage is not often distinguished from the embryonic stage in animals.

Regarding humans, the Fetus article seems aptly named as it is, focussing on the human fetus, and a hatnote to other uses (e.g. other species) seems appropriate.Ferrylodge (talk) 14:24, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

The distinction between an embryo and a fetus is especially important in egg-laying organisms, where there is an embryonic stage and no fetal stage. Just because there are instances where it is not important to discriminate them does not mean that the distinction isn't important in others. Ultimately, your solution still doesn't address the point that we are going to have an article called 'fetus' where one is not supposed to talk about the fetus (unless it belongs to a specific species). Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:15, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
Regarding the idea of having an article called “fetus” that only deals with the human species, and has a hatnote for other species, that seems okay to me. IMO, “fetus” should either be the title of an article focussing mostly or entirely on humans, or alternatively should redirect to such an article. Do you disagree with that?
I have no problem if “Fetus” is the title of an article dealing exclusively with humans. That’s because I don’t think scientists often use the word “fetus” to refer to a stage in other animals that is distinct from the embryonic stage. Egg-laying animals have no fetal stage, and other animals have both a fetal and embryonic stage that are usually discussed as a whole rather than dividing up into the two stages.
If we merge all of the non-human prenatal stuff into one article (e.g. Gestational development of non-humans), then we could create sub-articles when enough material accumulates. One sub-article could be for egg-laying critters, and another for non-egg-laying critters. That seems like a sensible division to me. If we were to do that, then I doubt it would ever become necessary to create two sub-sub-articles: one for the fetus of non-egg-laying critters, and another for the embryo of non-egg-laying critters. But we could discuss that when we come to it.
Many articles that could extend to other species instead focus on humans. Here are just a few examples: pregnancy, adult, asexuality, meniscus (anatomy), maxilla, blood type, anal sex, dental caries, macula, diet (nutrition), ovulation, underwater diving, body composition, motivation, menstrual cycle, stomach, small intestine, ovarian cancer, arterial tree, hair care, Folliculogenesis, vulva, gender differences, clavicle, and breast.Ferrylodge (talk) 17:24, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm happy to concede to allowing 'fetus' to redirect to 'human fetus', as your argument that this is what people are searching for seems to have some merits. However, it isn't a good title for that page; the term is widely used by scientists, as demonstrated below. Thanks for bringing up the list of other articles which also need a similar disambiguation; I suspect that some (such as ovarian cancer and anal sex) could be left where they are, and the moving of others may have to wait for the addition of more biological content. I might leave dealing with them for another day at the moment, though! Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:36, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
The human fetus is just a special case of a stage in the development of all vertebrates. If you look up "fetus" in a good dictionary you will find something like "an unborn or unhatched vertebrate especially after attaining the basic structural plan of its kind ; specifically : a developing human from usually two months after conception to birth" (Merriam-Webster). Google Scholar for "fetus vertebrate zoology" gets a ton of hits including:
As you can see, there's plenty to write about fetuses in general, irrespective of taxon at any level between species and subphylum. The artcile with the most general title, Fetus, should cover these. Topics specific to humans should probably go in Human fetus, allowing for other taxonomic levels, e.g. Primate fetus (which would cover e.g the development of fingers and the opposable thumb in all primates) and Mammal fetus (features and processes that are significant for all mammals, inluding marsupials and monotremes). --Philcha (talk) 09:26, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
I do not think that your definition ("an unborn or unhatched vertebrate especially after attaining the basic structural plan of its kind”) will help us much here, because it is ambiguous about whether the fetal stage includes the embryonic stage. If we want to avoid total chaos in the article about the human fetus, we should use the standard definition that establishes the fetal stage as beginning at the end of the embryonic stage.
If you look at the first article you cited (“Evolutionary transformations of fetal membranes and reproductive strategies”), it says: “Fetal membranes (such as the chorioallantois and yolk sac) are essential to embryonic development.” Thus, it clearly is using the term “fetus” in a way that includes the embryonic stage, as articles on animal devlopment often do. That's why I think we ought to have an article on prenatal animals that deals with both embryos and fetuses in a unified way. Not so for humans, however, because the standard definition establishes the fetal stage as beginning after the embryonic stage, and there is a great deal of material relevant only to the former and not the latter.
Philcha, Smith609 said: "I'm happy to concede to allowing 'fetus' to redirect to 'human fetus'". Would that be acceptable to you? At the top of “human fetus” we could have a hatnote that refers readers to “Fetus (non-human)” or something like that. I still think it would be best to have the human fetus info at “Fetus” without a redirect, just like Pregnancy.Ferrylodge (talk) 19:37, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
Having the current content at "Human fetus", with "Fetus" redirecting to it, would be fine. Then "Fetus" could later evolve depending on what editors find when researching general vertebrate developmental biology. --Philcha (talk) 07:56, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
Please note that there are already at least four articles that cover animal gestation. See Prenatal development (non-human) and Gestation and Fetus (biology) and pregnancy (mammals). Are you suggesting that the Fetus article should do so as well?Ferrylodge (talk) 16:13, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
You've just shown that there's a major need to think out the structure of the package of articles on vertebrate reproduction. However that turns out, I think the artcile with the unqualified title Fetus should not be restricted to humans, and should either should have the broadest relevant coverage or be a DAB page. --Philcha (talk) 22:02, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Pilcha, up until a few days ago, the Fetus article did include some material about other species. See here. Is that article structure acceptable to you? If so, then we only have to convince Martin (Smith609), who changed that structure. What do you say Martin?Ferrylodge (talk) 22:16, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
I also like the idea that Fetus be a general cross-species overview and Human fetus the specialized article. The easiest way is to move Fetus_(biology) over to Fetus and move Fetus to Human fetus (which now redirects to it). After doing this, you can add a hat tip on Fetus to point the reader to the most commonly searched subtopic. Look at Monosodium glutamate for an example of this practice. Xasodfuih (talk) 11:23, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
Zasdfuih, Martin (Smith609) said: "I'm happy to concede to allowing 'fetus' to redirect to 'human fetus'". Pilcha said: "Having the current content at 'Human fetus', with "Fetus" redirecting to it, would be fine." Would that be okay with you? Alternatively, would this article structure work for you?
Info about the human fetus is a subject of high importance and interest, and it's what 99% of people will expect to find when they click on Fetus. My concern is that we should not bury that info so users have to keep clicking and clicking to find it.Ferrylodge (talk) 17:46, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
I think it's an inappropriate form of anthropocentrism and non-encyclopedic to do so. Show me some other general encyclopedia that discusses only the human fetus in the entry for fetus, but also has a fetus_(biology) article. By your standard the article on MSG should be mostly about the Chinese restaurant syndrome (headaches etc.) since that what most people would want to read, and we should have an MSG_(chemistry) article for the buffs. Having said that, I don't care enough about this issue to start reverting you... Xasodfuih (talk) 10:19, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
Xasodfuih, did you click on this article structure?Ferrylodge (talk) 17:03, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

outdent) Philcha says above "there's a major need to think out the structure of the package of articles on vertebrate reproduction." I'd submit that the range of articles needing such attention is much wider. I think we even need a guideline about anthropocentrism; it's a widespread bias. Many times someone edits 'animals' to 'humans and animals', ditto for mammals. Many places it's impossible to tell if a particular paragraph refers to all animals/mammals, or just to humans. I was involved in translating Sleep (non-human) from the Swedish and while I don't much like the parentheses in the title, it's a fork that was needed. A discussion about structure and particularly article titles is needed and overdue. - Hordaland (talk) 12:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree that we do need to have a coherent way to serve both sets of customers- those who are looking for information on humans and those that are looking for information about gestational development in general. I also agree that a disproportionate number of readers are primarily interested in human development. I believe that hatnotes for a "human v. general" article would be appropriate, and I guess I'd rather see human as the main and general as the hatnote. Our readers are all humans, our writers are all humans, I think we can be forgiven for being a little anthropocentric in the spirit of customer service. SDY (talk) 16:52, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
SDY makes some valid points. It will certainly be great if one day we can decipher animal language so that other species can also become wikiholics, but until then some anthropocentrism is inevitable.Ferrylodge (talk) 17:08, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Solution

Okay, it seems to me that the best solution is to have a 'Human xxx' article, and a 'xxx (general)' article (perhaps 'xxx (biology)' or 'xxx (non-human)' will be more appropriate in some cases). Since most readers are interested in 'Human xxx', the page 'xxx' should redirect to 'Human xxx' unless there is a strong argument for not doing so.

This solves the following problems:

  • The scope of any article is immediately apparent from the title alone
  • Readers who search for 'xxx' are directed to the page that they are most likely to want (statistics-wise, readers of 'human fetus' outnumber those of 'fetus (biology)' about 100 to 1
  • Both humans and non-humans can develop their own comprehensive coverage without stepping on the toes of content from the other domain.

Does anybody have any disagreements with this solution, and if so, specifically where?

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 23:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Algae at WP:PROD

A bunch of algal genuses have been sent for deletion at WP:PROD. 76.66.193.90 (talk) 06:30, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Science FAC symposium

I'm letting you guys know about it because a lot of what is said there is also relevant for you guys. Plus your feedback would definitely be both relevant and appreciated. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:59, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Animals named after celebrities

According to the list of animals named after celebrities, the Papasula abbotti costelloi was named that way "in allusion to Abbott and Costello", but it also says that "the species was named abbotti two years before Bud Abbott was born". Obviously, an animal species cannot be named after a notable person this long before even his birth. Which is true? Aecis·(away) talk 16:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 04:57, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

Everyone loves it, so I don't see why you guys wouldn't.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:11, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


RFC notification

FYI, there's an RFC going on here that may be of interest. The issue is whether the article on abortion should describe and/or show what is aborted.Ferrylodge (talk) 00:53, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

problem with Hunger

Hi -- not sure if this is a useful place to come; I haven't had much luck getting help from WikiProjects, but I'll try anyway. An editor, who I think is basically capable and whose intentions are clearly good, has messed up a section of the Hunger article. I haven't been able to persuade him that his edits are harmful, and I'm hoping that input from other voices might reinforce the message. I really would like to avoid solving the problem by forceful methods if at all possible. (As info, I have been maintaining WikiProject Neuroscience for a few months.) Looie496 (talk) 16:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I had a quick look at that article, but I'm unsure what the dispute is about. Nothing obvious on the talk page where you'd be involved, and the article's history shows a bunch of users have edited it recently, so I'm unsure what the problem is. Could you be more specific? Xasodfuih (talk) 16:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, the problem is that Hunger#Hunger mortality statistics is written in a very non-encyclopedic way, and has too many refs. I discussed this with Armando on his own talk page. Looie496 (talk) 17:38, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposed project of interest - organismal biomechanics

Hi all, I'm trying to start a Wikiproject to cover Organismal Biomechanics, and I was wondering if anyone else would be interested? Articles such as animal locomotion. gait, muscle, and similar would be our targets. See my userpage for a list of what I'm planning to work on, including some truly awful articles in desperate need of attention. See proposal page at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals#Wikiproject_Organismal_Biomechanics. I'll keep anyone who signs up updated via their userpages until I get a project page made. Help of all kinds is appreciated, from brain dumps to wikifying, grammar and dealing with references. Mokele (talk) 22:38, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 08:52, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

new page on Genetic monitoring

Does this page overlap with any others, which should link to/from be merged/split/whatever? Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:01, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


Salt needs some clarification

Says: "Salt is ... composed primarily of sodium chloride that is essential for animal life, but toxic to most land plants. ... Chloride and sodium ions, the two major components of salt, are necessary for the survival of all known living creatures ...." -- I don't think that this is strictly speaking a logical contradiction, but it's not completly clear what is being said. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 02:16, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Keratocyte

Should corneal keratocytes have their own page or should they be places in the fibroblast article? A specialist's opinion is welcomed. Answer at my talkpage, please. Kind regards, --CopperKettle 06:47, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Did you know that species article titles can be italicised?

I found out yesterday that it is possible to italicise the main title of article of species and genuses - like on this article Hyacinthus orientalis for example (I don't mean by using ''Hyacinthus orientalis''). There seem to be a lot of articles where this hasn't been done. It can be done by removing the "name" section from the taxobox - this doesn't change the taxobox at all but does change the article's title. The diff for doing this to the above article is here if you're not sure what I mean. Hope this is useful! Smartse (talk) 21:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Note that you can use {{italictitle}} if the name in the taxobox is a common name or if the title has (genus) in it. As on Homo (genus) Smartse (talk) 09:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Fertilisation of Orchids at FAC, please help

An article on Charles Darwin's 1862 book Fertilisation of Orchids has gone through GA and seems to have stalled a bit at FAC where it was nominated on 7 July, any reviews and comments here will be much appreciated. It's significant in the history of biology, and still seems to have current relevance. Thanks, . dave souza, talk 21:52, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:JOURNALS need helps!

I've noticed that most of the most popular missing journals are biology related. Help would be appreciated to turn that see of red into a sea of blue. Most of these seem to be abbreviations that should be redirected to the main journal. Thanks. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 23:25, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to remove those who aren't biology-related. See also WikiProject Medicine's similar list. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 05:01, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Writing guide. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 20:18, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
What about Mathematical Biosciences? Kae1is (talk) 21:37, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Feel free to create it (assuming it meets WP:Notability (academic journals)). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:37, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Help needed: Conflict of interest

This addition to iodine and the addition to selenium from User:Sebastiano venturi have raised POV concerns of the Project Elements. May I ask members of this Project to screen the edits of that user, on various pages (Stomach cancer, Evolution of dietary antioxidants, List of antioxidants in food, Iodide as an antioxidant, antioxidant, Evolution of dietary antioxidants). All edits appeared within a short period and often aim at adding selected publications by the author. Thank you. Materialscientist (talk) 03:43, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Political boundaries placed on species

I do not see the need for a Category:Wildlife by country. Wildlife does not stop at a political border. Category:Wildlife by region is more appropriate since wildlife types are generally restricted to continents or islands. Same goes for Category:Ecology by country. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 01:50, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

BOT notice

Hello,

I have created a bot that will be using a database of prehistoric genus information to fill in the tables on pages like List of prehistoric starfish#The list. Please see its bot request and comment there. Suggestions for improvements and/or people willing to spot check its work are welcome and appreciated.

Thank you, ThaddeusB (talk) 01:58, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Expert opinion needed

Background:' The following articles contain empty tables of prehistoric genus of varying types of creatures. A bot has been written by me that can fill them in using data from paleodb.org and Sepkoski. The task is currently stalled due to some concern about my own lack of expert knowledge on the subject.

Needed: I need someone eith "expert" knowledge (defined as a passion for the subject matter & the ability to easily spot blatant errors) to review the potential bot output of any one of the following articles of his or her choosing:

The articles:

Sample page: A sample page is available for viewing here. This is provided to give you an idea about what the output will look like, but shouldn't be viewed as a final product as it (currently) includes at least one error that will be corrected shortly.

What I want: Basically, I want someone to look over an entire table (of their choice) and say either "I don't see any obvious errors" or "there are a few errors such as X,Y,Z." I will then figure out the cause of the errors (if any), fix the code, and re-run to make sure the errors are gone.

Reward: Wikipedia gets a lot of valuable science content. I get this stalled project off my to-do list. You get a "warm fuzzy" for helping improve Wikipedia in a significant way, my gratitude, and a token of my appreciation.

Let me know if interest, ThaddeusB (talk) 03:34, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Expert needed at double haploid

I tagged the above for an expert (I found it in articles needing wikifying, and a biologist could do it much better than me). Then I wondered what would happen, so I asked at the helpdesk [3]. Apparently you don't have a link to [[Category: Biology articles needing expert attention]], on your project page, and you could have one. Kind regards. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:52, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Species names

There's an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Poll regarding style of scientific name of animals with common names about the way common and scientific names should be presented in the lead of articles about species. Opinions from users with expertise in those topics is welcomed. MBelgrano (talk) 14:24, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Vacuum activity

I added original material to Vacuum activity because I couldn't find enough good sources on the Internet, please check it. Proxima Centauri (talk) 09:57, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Poor Science Category

This category Template:Human_group_differences is a hodge-podge of useful references and historic events in pseudoscience. While I feel that the events they reference should be referenced, they should also be properly discredited, by reliable sources. That's a large task. In the meantime, perhaps if someone would add some warnings on pages like Neuroscience_and_intelligence. Downchuck (talk) 05:12, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Death

Please join discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Death regarding forming a joint task force with WikiProject Sociology. --Geniac (talk) 02:47, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

peer review at wikiversity

Any one wants to peer review my crack pot theory :D on abiogenesis at http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/2.0_Hackolution . Osmotic competition between vesicles, coupled with "reproducing" clay crystals catalyzing molecules for the above mentioned osmotic pressure. Wikiversity has very few users, thank you. And maybe add this request in the todo list?--Deweirdifier (talk) 22:23, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to add featured picture stars to taxoboxes

There is a proposal at the Village Pump[4] to add featured picture stars to featured pictures in article space (below the featured picture, in its caption box, or image caption box in the case of taxoboxes with featured pictures.

The discussion includes asking the question whether they should be added to all featured pictures in articles including in taxoboxes, added just to featured pictures in caption boxes only and not to featured pictures in taxoboxes, or not added at all. Currently to find out if an image is a featured picture the user has to click on the image and its file page indicates with a star in the upper right hand corner that it is a featured picture.

To join the discussion and express your opinion go to the Village Pump. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 08:35, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposed merger of mathematical and theoretical biology

We currently have mathematical biology and theoretical biology as two separate articles. There seems to be significant overlap in scope. Please help find a strategy for dealing with this at Talk:Mathematical biology#Merge with Theoretical biology?

I have also notified WP:WikiProject Mathematical and Computational Biology. If you know of other relevant WikiProjects, please notify them as well. Hans Adler 07:40, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

GA review and issue concerning "phylogeny"

To begin, I am currently doing a GA review of Biology. Since that's a very important article and obviously central to this WikiProject, any input is appreciated; see Talk:Biology/GA1.

In the process, I came across a definition of "phylogeny" that seemed a bit dubious to me, and went to check the phylogeny article to see what Wikipedia has to say. I was surprised to see that this extremely important term redirects to phylogenetics, which never gives an explicit definition of "phylogeny", and as far as I can see doesn't even use the term. That's frankly a pretty glaring gap in coverage. Looie496 (talk) 19:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

wiktionary:phylogeny looks fine to me. The phylogenetics article seems to cover it OK on the level of concepts (synapomorphy, paraphyly, etc, etc), so I'm not completely sure what is missing here (there's almost always room for some kind of improvement, but since it isn't a dictionary I'm not sure I agree with "glaring gap" based on what has been said so far). Kingdon (talk) 02:14, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Biology has been reviewed and considered close to GA quality. If a few people help out with the last quirks, this could reach GA soon. --Ettrig (talk) 21:18, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Book-class

Since this is one of the biggest WikiProject, and that several Wikipedia-Books are biology related, could this project adopt the book-class? This would really help WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, as the WikiProject Biology people can oversee books like Biological classification much better than we could as far as merging, deletion, content, and such are concerned. Eventually there probably will be a "Books for discussion" process, so that would be incorporated in the Article Alerts. I'm placing this here rather than on the template page since several taskforces would be concerned.

There's an article in this week Signpost if you aren't familiar with Wikipedia-Books and classes in general. Thanks. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 20:40, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Anyone for/against this? Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:50, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Peer review for book Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control

I put the article about the book Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control up for peer review. Input would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Peer review/Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control/archive1. Cirt (talk) 01:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I need your help with an articles for creation submission

Hello, biologists! I need a more qualified eye to look at an WP:WPAFC submission that is located right over here. Specifically, my untrained eye has three questions:

1) Does this even make sense?
2) Should Wikipedia have an article about it?
3) Is this synthesis?

Thanks for your help. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 11:07, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

1. Yes, it seems to. I'd have to read up more to check the details, but insects certainly do take up plenty of toxic substances from plants. For a wonderful non-technical introduction (to chemical warfare among insects as well as other insect topics) see For the Love of Insects, ISBN 978-0674018273. One journal article with full text online (non-paywalled) is Plant-derived pyrrolizidine alkaloid protects eggs of a moth (Utetheisa ornatrix) against a parasitoid wasp (Trichogramma ostriniae) (just the first one I found in a search for "Pyrrolizidine Alkaloid site:nih.gov").
2. It fulfills all the criteria I can think of off the top of my head (certainly the AFC submission has plenty of reliable sources, and more could be found per my quick search mentioned above). I suppose one could argue about whether we should also have an article on the more general Biological sequestration (currently a one sentence mention with no redlink at Sequestering; I didn't search extensively to see whether we might have it under another name), but I don't see why its absence would necessitate rejecting the more specific article.
3. A bit hard to say without checking the sources (whether they are cited selectively; whether the papers being cited are trying to summarize the state of the field as a research paper tends to do in the introduction section). I didn't see much in the way of pushing of a controversial agenda. There might be some review articles or textbooks out there which could address this, if it seems like a problem which needs to get addressed before creating the article. My usual philosophy is to not get upset about citing primary sources unless it seems to clearly be creating WP:NPOV problems, edit wars, and the like, but if someone wants to pre-emptively seek out some secondary sources, I'm guessing something could be found.
One more note - most of the journal articles probably have a DOI (see crossref.org) and/or a PMID (a google search for the article title with "site:nih.gov" is one way to find this), and there is probably a non-paypalled abstract (summary) for many (likely not all especially given their age). If you want to see the abstracts and need help with this process, I can advise. Kingdon (talk) 14:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, Kingdon. In my opinion, the number of people who can grasp this is small enough to avoid any edit wars! I get the feeling that if I did anything with that article, I'd just mess it up- so I've moved it into mainspace as an accepted sumbission, and tagged the talk page with the WPBIOLOGY tag. Thanks for your help, and thanks for anything you can do to improve the article. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 18:02, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for moving it to mainspace. I've deorphaned it and done a few little cleanup things. If you really find the article that baffling, it must have problems with Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible. Sure, there are various names of species, names of compounds, etc, but the basic story is "insects eat toxic plants, making themself toxic", and we shouldn't let that get lost in a maze of details. Kingdon (talk) 16:27, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Or it has problems with an editor who REALLY hated biology in college. Liked physics, loved astronomy, but never got through first semester bio. Don't take my confusion to mean any more than that ;) Bradjamesbrown (talk) 00:06, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Category:Fellows of the International Society for Computational Biology

Hi

I have proposed that Category:Fellows of the International Society for Computational Biology should be deleted or renamed. Your input would be welcome in the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 December 23#Category:Fellows_of_the_International_Society_for_Computational_Biology. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:23, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Generation (biology)

Could someone create this? Right now the generation article is only about the genealogical generations, and it makes a very poor link when talking about the concept of generations in biology. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 18:24, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there a need for a link at all? I don't see such a need in the case of Mouse, Centaurea, or Humpback Whale (the first three I noticed which currently link to generation). It is just a WP:DICTDEF sort of thing there. I'd be more excited about turning Population biology into something larger than the stub which it currently is; that would cover generations but be more likely to develop into a real article. As an aside, older biological works (see for example Erasmus Darwin) tend to use the word "generation" in a different sense than the above (I think it is usually a synonym for reproduction although I'm not sure that is the only meaning). Kingdon (talk) 20:19, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
Well a suitable target for a redirect is also an alternative. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 22:56, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Portal:Biological warfare at peer review

A new portal Portal:Biological warfare is now up for portal peer review, the review page is at Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Biological warfare/archive1. I put a bit of work into this and feedback would be appreciated prior to featured portal candidacy. Thank you for your time, Cirt (talk) 22:31, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Request for input on Bipedalism and Aquatic ape hypothesis

The pages Bipedalism and Aquatic ape hypothesis have both recently come under heavy and persistent dispute due to two users who insist on promoting their version of Aquatic ape hypothesis and expunging as much criticism of the idea as possible. At the moment, it's just me and one other user fending them off, so any help would be greatly appreciated (especially since I'm off to the SICB meeting on Sunday and the other user seems to be gone for Xmas). Mokele (talk) 16:00, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Reelin trouble

  • nl:Reeline is proposed for deletion again at the Dutch Wiki.. D'oh. Please help. --CopperKettle 09:56, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
I glanced over the talk page (well, mostly the parts in English) and the AfD discussion. If the Dutch wikipedia has a policy or custom of wanting fewer footnotes and fewer different sources, then I don't really see any need to get all upset about it (I personally find it hard to work on articles like that, but perhaps the kinds of articles I find difficult don't happen in the Dutch wikipedia as much). When in rome and all. The other thing that makes it hard to help from here is that one of the complaints is poor translation into Dutch, which only a native (or at least fluent) Dutch speaker can help with. As for the deletion proposal, seems like it has two !votes so far, both of which are keep. Kingdon (talk) 21:36, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Direct copies of species descriptions from external website

Can someone with more knowledge of the Bio project's standards please take a look at the edits by Gsautter (talk · contribs)? He's creating an enormous number of articles on several species of insect by copying material from plazi.org. Aside from the scientific classification box at the side, no additional information is provided, and the information provided is so technical that no one but a biologist would get anything out of it (the classification box tells me its an insect, but that's all I'm getting). His stated reasons are:

  • make them available to a wider audience
  • have them embedded in Wikipedia's greater network of the knowledge of mankind

which is laudable, but may be misinterpreting the purpose of the Wiki. I'd like input before I proceed further; if this sort of this is encouraged by the project, I'd just as soon drop it. —ShadowRanger (talk|stalk) 17:54, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

This sort of technical language doesn't (in my opinion) need wholesale deletion, but it could use some rewriting (and part of the problem with a wholesale import of another database is that the labor to do such rewriting may be hard to come by). Some of the text is usable as-is or with some copy-editing and wikification, for example: "Pheidole purpurea shows abundant geographic variation in traits, and some intra-populational variation. The metallic purple sheen is very strong in some populations (lowland areas of Lacandon rainforest, mid-elevation Pacific slope of southern Sierra Madre de Chiapas)". Other bits would need more work. See Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible. I'm more worried about copyrights. I'm not sure I fully follow how much of the text is directly copied from the source article (which is copyrighted, and not by plazi.org), and how much is re-synthesized based on some kind of transformation of the information therein (see Agosti, D., Egloff, W., 2009. Taxonomic information exchange and copyright: the Plazi approach. BMC Research Notes 2009, 2:53 for their description), but unless I misunderstand what they are doing, I'm not convinced by their legal theory. Furthermore, wikipedia might not want to take risks that plazi.org might be willing to take. I'm not sure what the process is for possibly grey areas which affect large numbers of articles, but we should try to get people at WP:COPYVIO or thereabouts involved. Kingdon (talk) 17:03, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
I concur. These are clearly copyright violations. E.g. the description in the article Gesomyrmex flavescens is copied & pasted directly from the Zootaxa article, which has a copyright notice. I haven't gone too far to gain access to all of the publications used, but the articles seem to be wholesale copy & paste jobs from the cited sources. I don't know of many journals that releases copyright of its text that would be acceptable for Wikipedia (some, like PLoS ONE, use creative commons licenses). I favor deleting these unambiguous copyvios. Rkitko (talk) 18:19, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
How should we proceed? I'd just tag with {{db-copyvio}} except (a) that template wants a URL and most of the publications probably aren't online without a login, and (b) there are a lot of them (I think it is between 100 and 200), and I've never really learned even the semi-automated ways of doing such things. Is this a job for another mass AfD like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anybot's algae articles? Kingdon (talk) 18:31, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
I'd be willing to do a mass deletion. I think it's a clear case of copyright violation and would not need to be sent to AfD, despite what that BMC Research Notes article argues. I would feel more comfortable if we had at least one more editor's opinion. I'll post a quick note at WP:CP and see if anyone else agrees. Rkitko (talk) 01:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
...Or not. There doesn't seem to be an appropriate place to just post a link to this discussion requesting another opinion. Ah well, I'll just start going through the list, then. If there are any objections, I can stop and restore. Rkitko (talk) 01:20, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
I've made a start at it. Instead of deleting, I've just removed the copyvio bits from them so far, leaving only a taxobox and sentence. I've also had to remove the links to info hosted by Plazi itself per WP:LINKVIO. There are a few other Plazi-related editors out there whose edits should be checked for copyright violations: Myrmoteras (talk · contribs) and G.Hagedorn (talk · contribs). I'll continue on Gsautter's edits tomorrow. Rkitko (talk) 03:53, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
There's been some discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Insects; I've posted an additional pointer there. I looked over the contributions of Myrmoteras (talk · contribs) and G.Hagedorn (talk · contribs) and didn't see anything. Kingdon (talk) 15:15, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
I disagree that these are copyright violations. Descriptions of organisms, although looking similar to a creative textual work, is an expression of objective information that is difficult if not impossible to express any different. It uses defined technical terms and describes an objective truth (the morphology and other features of an organism). Neither is the sequence of statements in such descriptions a creative act, but follows natural arrangements. In the case of only a single description being available, it is near impossible to synthesize an "alternative" new description. Not allowing to reproduce this information would prevent any person on earth from correctly identifying a given ant at hand as such a species. – It is established practice in science to allow reproduction of information that is necessary to obtain knowledge. Copyright in most countries recognizes that it should not prevent the spread of knowledge. The cited article by Agosti and Egloff (the latter of which being a copyright lawyer) tries to remove possible doubt about this (mentioned as "grey areas" by Kingdon). – This clearly does not imply that no parts of scientific articles are under copyright. It applies to technical parts like nomenclature and description, but for example, often not to the discussion. – Scientific descriptions are intended as objective and faithful textual representations of a living organism on earth - I believe this should be compared to faithful reproductions of two-dimensional works of art. Except that luckily the organism itself was never under copyright... --G.Hagedorn (talk) 22:25, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
I disagree completely. Rewriting the original species descriptions is not only encouraged in Wikipedia, it's damn near impossible not to. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a field guide (see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not). It's purpose is to describe topics, subjects, and individual thinks like organisms. Wikipedia is not meant to be a place to include the technical minutiae of a species description (see Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible). When I create articles, I frequently refer to the original species description, but I wouldn't dare think to include incomprehensible details that don't matter much or distinguish it from other closely allied species. Regardless of the copyright debate where we obviously disagree, these kinds of imports of technical descriptions from copyrighted sources are not suitable for Wikipedia's purpose without heavy editing to make the text accessible (and thus, also nearly render the copyright violation issue moot). I would discourage further creation of articles from Plazi or importation of any species description without writing in your own words, which contrary to your assertion is possible and has been done several thousand times already in our taxa articles. Rkitko (talk) 04:12, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree with the arguments that wikipedia's stand should be conservative. Best for all concerned that we rephrase even scientific descriptions unless in public domain and properly quoted as per MOS and with reference. AshLin (talk) 14:15, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
I would argue that there is no reason for not to rephrase species decriptions, in fact, I hope that this is going to happen. This could happen with people having better writing skills, and more importantly when new insights on a particular species turn up. But as starting point, I consider the original descriptions as very valuable. As we argue in our paper Agosti, D., Egloff, W., 2009. Taxonomic information exchange and copyright: the Plazi approach. BMC Research Notes 2009, 2:53, coauthored by a very competent and well known Swiss copyright lawyer (see eg [5]), descriptions per se do not qualify as work, since they are not unique in the sense of copyright law. At the same time, they are part of the scientific domain, which requires that the source of material used is provided and cited, which we do for each species. There are about 17,000 new descriptions of species every year. All these descriptions are unique, and no other sources of these species do exist. I could be argued, that this is all technical jargon – but at the same time it could be argued, that unless we know, we can not protect, do not care about a particular species, and there is a general interest in the discovery of new species (see eg continual reports in BBC). It therefore is important that each of the species has its place in Wikipedia. Since more ant more images of species become available as well as other material, the editing process AshLin refers would just what is needed. The original description is the best possible seed for that. A citation of it is given that will always allow to step back and look at the original description Myrmoteras (talk) 06:20, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not the place to deposit such descriptions. As I explained above, we must make technical articles accessible and can't rely on the hope that someone will come along and do it for you. I agree that original descriptions are valuable, but not to Wikipedia's general audience. Your goal is admirable, but Wikipedia is not the place to host such material. Further, I agree with your assertion that the original description is an excellent "seed" for article creation and expansion, but if you're hosting such descriptions on Plazi's website already, why duplicate it? When and if someone is going to create or expand articles on ants, they will find your website and use your website for the information as a source when writing a new article in their own words. (I would still discourage linking to the website, though, since in the US even linking to known copyright violations is a violation itself, which is why we don't have many links to youtube.)
On copyright, you must be aware that Wikipedia's servers are located in the US, so we must follow the rather restrictive United States copyright law (this is why we are allowed to use the fair use provision infrequently). I admit I have not read your full article, but I note you mention the copyright lawyer coauthor is Swiss. Every country's copyright is drastically different and I doubt your arguments would prevail under the strict US law, thus opening Wikipedia to risk. This is why we must be so conservative with out copyright decisions. Rkitko (talk) 13:09, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello. Feedback was requested on this at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2010 February 28. I'm sorry for the delay in response, but those are not evaluated by an administrator for a full seven days after listing. I have blanked the article listed there, Pheidole purpurea, pending resolution.

While the US copyright laws that govern Wikipedia do not protect non-creative speech, the threshold of creativity is very low, and creative elements include not only descriptive language but also facts chosen and the order of facts. For one example of how low the threshold is, consider American Dental Association v. Delta Dental Plans (<http://cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F3/126/977/497929/>), where even taxonomic classifications are found to be copyrightable. In one specific example selected to demonstrate the creativity, the Court noted:

Number 04267 reads "guided tissue regeneration--nonresorbable barrier, per site, per tooth" but could have read "regeneration of tissue, guided by nonresorbable barrier, one site and tooth per entry". Or "use of barrier to guide regeneration of tissue, without regard to the number of sites per tooth and whether or not the barrier is resorbable". The first variation is linguistic, the second substantive; in each case the decision to use the actual description is original to the ADA, not knuckling under to an order imposed on language by some "fact" about dental procedures.

It might be helpful to think of it in comparison to photography. A nature photographer does not create the Pheidole purpurea when he takes a picture of it; presuming it's alive and free to move about, he doesn't choose its placement or pose. But though his photograph may be merely capturing what is there, with no special filters or recognizably artistic elements, it is still protected by copyright under US law. Or looking back to the document I have linked above, maps. Maps are recorded observations of natural phenomena, but they are explicitly protected by US copyright law.

While there may be an interesting legal challenge here, the Wikimedia Foundation and hence Wikipedia are conservative on questions of copyright law. In the absence of verification that these are public domain (such as a legal precedent which we might use to determine consensus), we can't use them. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:14, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Featured portal candidacy

I have nominated Portal:Biological warfare as a candidate for Featured portal status. Feel free to comment, at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Biological warfare. Cirt (talk) 20:30, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Type locality

Just a reminder that type locality is a disambiguation page, and should not normally be linked to. For biology articles, the correct destination is type locality (biology). If anyone would like to help clear up the incorrect links, take a look at Special:WhatLinksHere/Type locality. Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 19:55, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

New definition for Vivipary

I just inserted a new definition for vivipary, which I took from wiktionary:vivipary. The former definition didn't talk about plant vivipaty but I'm not sure that I got it right. Does the new defintion correctly delineate what is in the category of vivipary and what isn't? For example:

  • Are "spores or buds" correct in the plants definition?
  • Would normal vegetative reproduction be classified as vivipary?
  • The last paragraph says "Viviparous plants produce seeds...". Shouldn't it say "Viviparous plants can produce seeds..." because there are many viviparous plants that do not reproduce from seeds?

I just get the feeling that I'm not dealing with some middle ground of reproduction methods; either something that should be in the definition of vivipary but isn't right now or something that should be excluded from the definition. Would someone who knows more about botany than I do have a look. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 14:14, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

First of all, I don't like the wording "two different meanings". If the meanings are really different, it should be two different articles (but I'm not sure they are - both have to do with the offspring developing before detaching from the parent). This word does not apply to vegetative reproduction (at least in the usual cases). Buds is wrong. Seeds is typical. I wouldn't trust the wiktionary definition; I'd have more faith in vivipary (plants) from the National Agricultural Library. They also mention bulbils (e.g. Allium); I don't know whether those are vegetative or whether they develop from seeds. The fern case is Asplenium bulbiferum; it sounds like this is vegetative rather than involving spores but I'm not sure. If you aren't getting enough answers here, I'd ask at WT:PLANTS. Kingdon (talk) 15:42, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Categorisation of individual species

Some time ago, I wrote an article on Cletocamptus helobius. Because it was described by biologists from Louisiana State University, is it appropriate to add it to Category:Louisiana State University? I work very little with science articles (most of my work is with US geography or historic buildings), so I don't know whether this is a common practice. Nyttend (talk) 17:50, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Book:Evolution

Some user created this book recently. It was in a rough shape, so I expanded it significantly. However, I don't know if gave things undue prominence or forgot major aspects. If you could take a look (and tweak things if necessary) it would be appreciated. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 22:40, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Article for comment

Maahesian Mimicry - term returns no hits in Google Scholar. Shyamal (talk) 10:15, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

If it is really a copyvio, sounds like a job for {{db-copyvio}} (although that isn't clear to me). The content of the article seems interesting but not clearly suitable for wikipedia in anything resembling its current form. And there quite likely is some WP:OR sprinkled in. Kingdon (talk) 12:59, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
Don't know if it's copyvio, but I have heard about the subject it treats before (don't remember hearing the term Maahesian Mimicry before though). However, this really is WP:fringe and one of a number of theories by Kermit Blackwood (who sent an OTRS allowing for the use of the photos in the wiki article). Compare multiple species of Green Peafowl (Talk:Green Peafowl & User talk:Rabo3/Archive 1#Green Peafowl). If this article remains, I'll look forward to seeing the high quality ref's supporting the theory. Unless provided, I would argue for delete due to WP:OR. • Rabo³ • 21:31, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Well, can't help but think this is a bit funny: User:Amoun-Pinudjem (aka Milad A.P. Sourial and Pinudjem, if this note is to be believed). I'm guessing that's the "Sourial" mentioned in the intro of Maahesian Mimicry, which, if the info on the user page is right, is the same person as the earlier mentioned Kermit Blackwood. • Rabo³ • 21:51, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Antigen

Someone recently pointed out how confusing the article on Antigen is (specifically the lede, to non-experts; I thought it may be worth linking here;

Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#An example of everything that is wrong with Wikipedia

After reading it a few times, I decided I couldn't really fix it myself - and thought this might be a good place to ask.  Chzz  ►  23:59, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I've tried a bit of a tweak to start by establishing context ("immune system") before diving into T-cells and other details. There probably is more to be done, although I'm not immediately seeing how either, and I'm also a bit unsure on details (like whether something has to be recognized as non-self to be called an antigen, which is what Immune system says but which doesn't seem to be the terminology at Antigen presentation). The article probably is also too focused on terminology and not enough on the phenomena being discussed. Kingdon (talk) 14:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Help close an RfC?

Talk:Homosexual_behavior_in_animals#RfC_Proposed_merge_of_list_into_article_on_homosexual_behaviour_in_animals is an RfC that probably can be closed now. It's quite short but I've already voiced my opinion. Could someone uninvolved close it? -- Banjeboi 01:47, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Adaptation to life at high altitude

A friend who works at the BBC commented to me recently that he'd wanted to link from their website, to a Wikipedia article about the biological adaptations made by animals which live at high altitude (such as those in Tibetan people#Physical adaptation to high altitudes, about human adaptation). He couldn't find one. Does such an article exist, or can we start one? What should it be called? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:59, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Notification regarding Wikipedia-Books

Hadronic Matter
An overview
An example of a book cover, taken from Book:Hadronic Matter

As detailed in last week's Signpost, WildBot has been patrolling Wikipedia-Books and searched for various problems in them, such as books having duplicate articles or containing redirects. WikiProject Wikipedia-Books is in the process of cleaning them up, but help would be appreciated. For this project, the following books have problems:

The problem reports explain in details what exactly are the problems, why they are problems, and how to fix them. This way anyone can fix them even if they aren't familiar with books. If you don't see something that looks like this, then all problems have been fixed. (Please strike articles from this list as the problems get fixed.)

Also, the {{saved book}} template has been updated to allow editors to specify the default covers of books (title, subtitle, cover-image, cover-color), and gives are preview of the default cover on the book's page. An example of such a cover is found on the right. Ideally, all books in Category:Book-Class Biology articles should have covers.

If you need help with cleaning up a book, help with the {{saved book}} template, or have any questions about books in general, see Help:Books, Wikipedia:Books, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, or ask me on my talk page. Also feel free to join WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, as we need all the help we can get.

This message was delivered by User:EarwigBot, at 01:37, 2 April 2010 (UTC), on behalf of Headbomb. Headbomb probably isn't watching this page, so if you want him to reply here, just leave him a message on his talk page. EarwigBot (owner • talk) 01:37, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Missing biology topics

I've updated my missing topics list about biology - Skysmith (talk) 13:08, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Australopithecus sediba

There's a big problem at Australopithecus sediba. It claims to be either an ancestor of H. habilis, or just H. erectus. This claim makes it appear that the genus Homo is a composite grouping with multiple lineages and no root species... how is that even a single genus?

65.94.253.16 (talk) 04:30, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

As I understand the discussion at Talk:Australopithecus sediba those are the very questions that researchers are trying to get a handle on. At a first glance anyway, wikipedia is doing a fair job of describing an unsettled scientific matter. Kingdon (talk) 01:24, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposed merger of Phenetics with Linnean taxonomy

A merger between the articles Phenetics with Linnean taxonomy has been proposed here. Since the subject is of importance to this WikiProject (Linnean taxonomy and Biological classification fall under this WikiProject), may I request comments from the WikiProject members on this issue. AshLin (talk) 06:08, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Biogeographical maps

Are there any standards for plant [or animal] range maps? Any conventional colours? I don't want to make too many and have to change'm all.

I asked that question at [Talk:WikiProject_Maps]. User:Yug replied saying well, not really, and he says they need some input: 'A biologist is still needed to tell us if better colors and better categorization are in use within the real-life biologist community's books.' Any thoughts from this project? (I will also copy this the Plants wikiproject) Kahuroa (talk) 03:22, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Red is usually used on distribution maps I see. I think the bird project uses green for year-round range, yellow for summer range, and blue for winter range. Ucucha 03:41, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for that. Does sound like we need to coordinate with the map project people and come up with some standard colours or plants and animals though. I have started doing a few New Zealand plant range maps, I am using lightish green for the range. I also have done one ecotype distribution map, which has a grey background and about 8 other colours. It looks a bit "bright" so that has sparked my query, and it's easy enough to change the colours in the photoshop psd file and I probably need to tidy it up a bit anyway. Kahuroa (talk) 09:36, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
This should also be run past our accessibility project; for instance, difficulties caused by colour-blindness may be overcome by using hatching or dots. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:02, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Discussion seems to be centred on WikiProject Maps#Biogeographical maps. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:42, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Scope

Not a member here, just noticed this article and thought that it is somewhere in the scope, but i see that you have a category system in place and I don't want to misplace an article, here it is Limb infarction--Iankap99 (talk) 22:33, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I see someone has now tagged this for Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine which sounds to me like the appropriate place. Thanks for letting us know. Kingdon (talk)

Medicine-, anatomy- and health-related articles

Google's private foundation is supporting expansions of the Swahili Wikipedia, Spanish Wikipedia, and Arabic Wikipedia. (See this announcement.) Forty medicine- or health-related articles, some of particular interest to developing countries, have been identified as targets. Basically, Google has offered to have these articles reviewed and professionally translated -- and we'd all rather that the translators were looking at good, accurate, globally relevant articles.

The list of articles includes some topics that are within the scope of this project. Several have recently been reviewed by outside experts, who have suggested several freely accessible online sources, factual corrections, and some ways to expand incomplete articles. Please read the comments on the talk page and see whether you can help. Even small contributions are very much appreciated.

If you are interested in helping with the overall project, please consider adding Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Google Project to your watchlist, improving any articles on the list, and/or contributing advice at the talk page. All editors are welcome. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:37, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, Scope again

Prototrophy seems like it belongs in some daughter project, i can't figure out which one though,--Iankap99 (talk) 02:01, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

It's usually in the context of bacteria, so it would likely be a part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Microbiology, but I suggest a transwiki to Wiktionary, which already has wikt:prototroph. A single sentence definition from an internet dictionary doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Could redirect to auxotrophy and fill in the details there. Rkitko (talk) 02:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
It's your call.--Iankap99 (talk) 03:50, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
Done, then. I redirected and added a clause to the auxotrophy article. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 03:59, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
For the future, can i leave articles related to this field but not in any project here?--Iankap99 (talk) 04:24, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
Sure, if you think people here might have the interest/expertise. Wikiprojects aren't supposed to be some crazy elaborate bureaucracy where you get caught in traps like "that's not my department", they are more like clubs of people interested in the same things. Kingdon (talk) 02:14, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Help with mass addition of external links to biochem articles

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask for help, but I noticed that User:Ozybolairy has been adding external links to a very large number of chemical/medicine articles, and I highly doubt most of the links are appropriate. I've reverted some of them, but I lack the qualifications to evaluate their relevance in most of the affected articles. Could someone please help review these links? Also, it appears to be borderline spam, since they all point to the same website. Thanks!—Tetracube (talk) 17:52, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

This is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pharmacology#EMC links. I agree with comments there that the links quite likely meet the standards of WP:EXT (at least the few I glanced at), but of course it is good to keep an eye on such situations, as we don't want to be indiscriminate and the bar at WP:EXT is pretty high about what should be included. Kingdon (talk) 11:41, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Carl Linnaeus named a lot of species

I'm looking for some advice and assistance on my recently created article List of Species described by Carl Linnaeus. I'm currently doing research and investigation of his system of classification and publication Systema Naturae, and I figured that having an article on all of the animal and plant species he discovered would aid me and possibly others (or for curious general readers). I got it started and added a lot of mammals, arthropods, and a species of green algae. And then it hit me; if Linnaeus had described over 4,000 species of animals and over 7,000 species of plants (which makes 11,000 species; "busy guy") then this page would be enormous and lengthy. A fellow Wikipedian had given me a few pointers, and I had a suggestion of splitting the list into plants and animals; but even those lists would be pretty big (even with them perfectly divided by phylum, class, order, etc). So can anybody help me out? Does anybody know how to make this article easier and better for the general public; and quite personally me (who favors studying animals over plants) --LinnaeusTaxonomy (talk) 00:59, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Genus Ariosoma

Hi,
It seems that the english page to the genus Ariosoma is wrong. If you are a french reader you can read this page. On (fr), (it) and (la) pages the genus described is a Congridae one and on the (en) page the genus are an extinct one directly link to the superclass Osteichthyes. Another error seam appears on the List of prehistoric bony fish page : genus Ariosoma and Ariomma are not in bold and not preceed by a dagger symbol. Please could you verify these data. Thanks a lot. Regards. french user Givet (speak) PS : sorry for my poor english! 86.203.124.235 (talk) 06:02, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

checkY by NicolasMachiavel french user

Dulcis foetidus

I'm a bit suspicious of this article, at the moment. A species...but nothing on Google, except for a rather obscure presentation at "British Science Festival". No Google News, etc. There is no genus called "Dulcis". Durio dulcis is a type of Durian, which is quite smelly.

If the thing was only discovered recently, how come it is in a book from 1973? And if it is in that book, why is there no other information on the internet about it?

Where does this information come from? When the active volatile organic compounds from these plants are reduced to extract they are smaller in lesser in olfactory units than that removed from the much smaller Dulcis foetidus flower. This is a single flower of modest size, peaking at a mean height of approximately 45 cm (18 inches).

So, OK, it was in a presentation thing, yesterday poster PDF YouTube. But is there any actual information about it, published anywhere?

Could some biologist folks please have a look? Cheers,  Chzz  ►  06:23, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm inclined to consider it an as yet unpublished new discovery or a hoax. In either case, we shouldn't have an article on it. Among the sources, the first one is a dictionary that does indeed contain the definition it is cited for, but it is an Ojibwa dictionary (spoken in Canada and the northern U.S.), and this plant is said to be in Brazil. The next two sources only talk about other species (and that is what they are cited for). I couldn't access the last source, which does look like it should have information on this plant. It is odd that the article does not cite the specific article in that book that is supposed to support its information.
On the whole, I would find it extremely implausible that no one would have cited the name of this plant since 1974 (or perhaps later if that source is there only to support some chemical data). The plant's name does not appear in IPNI, Web of Science, JSTOR, Google Scholar, or Google Books. Nor do there seem to be any other online sources except the ones you mentioned. Ucucha 11:19, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
The Youtube clip of "location of the boondoon flower" with botanic gardens glasshouse-style "jungle" complete with Victorian-era fountain and followed by a cut-away to a mangled Spathiphyllum "flower" stuck in bare purple soil give me little confidence in the veracity of this article. Melburnian (talk) 12:52, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks very much folks; superb. The article has now been PRODded. I don't know if it is an out-and-out hoax (if it is, they've gone to some trouble), or misinterpretation of some fake science presentation, or what...but yes, it is unverifiable, and that's the point. Frankly, something smells wrong :-)  Chzz  ►  00:33, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
There's more to it. Take a look at the external link to the BBC now. 69.3.72.249 (talk) 02:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Article nominated for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dulcis foetidus, so now is the time to find out if it is notable. It is a recent event, so maybe too soon to know if notable. Argue it out on the AfD page, please. 69.3.72.249 (talk) 15:09, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Yep; doing that now. The original suspicions were correct, it was a deliberate hoax, for a psych experiment; the only question now is, if it is a notable hoax. Probably not. Fun. Thanks for all the helps here.  Chzz  ►  02:58, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to editors to vote/discuss definition of science in Talk:Science

There has been an extensive discussion on the Talk:Science of what the lead definition of the science article should be. I suspect this might be an issue that may be of interest to the editors of this page. If so, please come to the voting section of the talk science page to vote and express your views. Thank you. mezzaninelounge (talk) 16:12, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Biology articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Biology articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 22:04, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Biased towards human perspectives

Hi all, on my journeys around here, I've often noticed that many biology related articles are currently written about the human aspect of the topic, rather than biology in general. For example, cough, penis, sperm, bone marrow and others that I've forgotten about, barely have anything about how these relate to other animals. I've suggested over at the countering systemic bias project about making a template similar to {{globalise}} that could be added to these articles to encourage people to add other information and to allow us to see which article need improving in this respect. Do you think this is a good idea? If so what wording do you think would be sensible? Smartse (talk) 00:38, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not a member here, but I think that is a great idea. Sleep and Eye with their daughter articles are fairly well 'globalized'. That sort of thinking is needed in many articles, as you point out. --Hordaland (talk) 19:24, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
Antibiotic is another example, I don't think the average reader would realise their ecological significance (or even that they have anything to with nature). Smartse (talk) 16:18, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

I think it is a wonderful idea. Though, I think your colleagues at WP:CSB fail to understand your concerns. razorbelle (talk) 23:35, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Pencil Sketches from UG lab work

I jus discovered the pencil sketches my relative made for her UG lab work in biology , they r in three parts , 2 of them r in zoology and the third is botany , they r part of the 3 yr course in India , Im planning on scanning & uploading it into wiki commons as jpeg/png/svg(potrace) , though some of the pages hav been punched in the centre i think they can be salvaged with manual touching ,they run into more than 500 sketches ,we can colourise it too if the need arises i guess , now the question , will we benefiting from uploding it ? Is it useful ? 1.)padina 2.)polysiphonia 3.)pinnularia (valve & gridle view) 4.)gracilaria (transverse view of thallus & L.S view of cystocarp ) , this is a random list of enteries from the set . https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B1hJO1N6piYFY2I5YzVlNDYtMjMzNi00ZDdiLTllMjYtMGQyNWQyYmZiZWVk&hl=en , this is a set of images of 1 of the sketches , vectorised & converted into svg . https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B1hJO1N6piYFMzQyNTgzOTItOWZhYy00NTA0LTk4ZjItZDY4MGJmMjUyMjM3&hl=en , this is the original image in jpg. Wat do u guys think ? --jeph (talk) 18:53, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Portal:Biology has been nominated for a Featured Portal Review

The biology portal is one of the Featured Portals, but I don't think it matches the standards required of portals these days. I've therefore listed it for review and possible defeaturing at Wikipedia:Featured portal review/Biology. If you can help to improve the portal, or you have any comments to make about it, please join in the discussion. Thanks, BencherliteTalk 11:09, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Template:Taxonomy disambiguation

FYI, there is a proposal about the use of {{Taxonomy disambiguation}} on Template:Taxonomy disambiguation (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) talk page, see Template talk:Taxonomy disambiguation. -- 76.66.200.95 (talk) 05:17, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Organizing Category pages for plant genera

A lot of people have noted that I've been making a project--some would say an obsession--with organizing Category pages for plant genera. More than once, I've had my edits reverted as insubstantial, or even been charged with vandalism. But in each case, when I've explained, people have seen the value of what I'm doing, and some have even come round to thanking me.

But now, one suggests that I come here and put forward what I'm doing, and seek a consensus. He points out that it's different from the general pattern for category pages (true), and he says there is no such consensus.

So here I am--and please tell me if I should be doing this somewhere else.

Here it is: MOST (not all) articles on individual species of plants have that species's binomial (Latin, scientific) name as their titles--thus: Genus Name (capitalized) species name (lower case initial).

Set up a category page for that genus, and just enter all the species, without some additional statement about alphabetizing, and the whole page will fall under one letter--the initial (capitalized) of the Genus name. Thus, you get Genus a..., Genus b..., Genus c..., etc. Those can be humongous; a genus with a few hundred species will have several pages--all under one letter.

There seems to be--if not a formal consensus--a predominant pattern for a well-organized category page of this sort. And that is to alphabetize them according to the species name, WITH THE INITIAL LETTER IN LOWER CASE. That is accomplished like this: at the edit page for the individual article, you have the statement (and I'm going to use single square brackets here, so I don't create some unintended link; the statement would have double brackets) [Category:Genus|species] with the Genus name capitalized, and the species name "lower cased."

Once that's done throughout the genus, the category page is organized so: all species Genus a... are filed under a; all species Genus b... are filed under b; etc.

The results are quite elegant, I think.

Now, one could ask, why not capitalize the species name, and just have the page organized under capital letters; wouldn't the results be, for all practical purposes, the same?

I submit three arguments for favoring using lower case: 1) The well-organized category pages are already done that way; 2) Giving the binomial name with the genus capitalized and the species lower case is apparently standard in biology; 3) On those occasional Genus Category pages that list articles besides species given by their binomial name (for example, common names), those other articles fall under one, capitalized alphabet at the beginning, and after that, the binomial names fall neatly, together, under a lower case alphabet.

By the way, I would point out that one does not want to use a default sort order statement for this. It may be good--I strongly suggest that it is--to list the species that way on the category page for the genus. But you would almost never want to do it that way on some other category. On just about any other category page, you'd almost certainly prefer to list species falling under one genus together by the genus name. 173.79.191.176 (talk) 23:48, 17 October 2010 (UTC)Stephen Kosciesza

I, for one, really appreciate all the work you've been doing. There seems to be consensus at WP:PLANTS to use lowercase sorts (e.g. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Archive37#Scientific names in genus categories). I don't think it's controversial at all. Rkitko (talk) 00:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Related edits

A new editor Eeeasterbunny --- (please see:list of contributions) --- has made small edits to a number of articles, which is in the biology category, or even the zoology category. Since these edits are beyond my area of expertise, I am hoping that some editors from this WikiProject could check out the accuracy of these edits. Some of the aricles are Hippopotamus, Squirrel, Human, Cat, and Dinosaur. These are only a few of the total number. Thanks ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 16:33, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I only looked at a few, but it seems the editor is adding minor ranks (like infraclass on the squirrel article) to the taxobox. WP:TX suggests that only major ranks be included that high in the taxobox; minor ranks are typically only included when necessary to understanding the subject, e.g. a minor rank directly above the article's taxon. I'm sure other edits could likewise be reverted because of that. Rkitko (talk) 16:53, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I just spotted one -- addition of archosauria to alligator. I actually think that's a very useful addition, so perhaps these shouldn't just be reverted automatically. Looie496 (talk) 17:41, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Thanks Rkitko, and Looie496. I left a message on this editor's talk page to ask that they join this discussion. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 17:44, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Try this link - List of Contributions - it lists all the articles that this person has edited thus far. The editors here can take a look at these one by one, I suppose, and make a determination. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 17:48, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Longstanding consensus is not to include these minor ranks (Eutheria, Archosauria), to avoid overly lengthy taxoboxes. These edits should likely all be reverted. Ucucha 18:37, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I liked them. Actually, as a frequent taxobox user, I found it much clearer to navigate up and down clades and understand how the mammals work, and the recent realignments. That's the thing, the mammals have recently been redone and in order to make sense of it all, they had to go outside the "King Phillip...but his genious was specious" system we memorized as kids. So it's much easier to understand the mammals now if we can see what they've done, how they've realigned the plecentals into the african, northern contenent, and South American groups. Wikipedia should get with the claddistic times in a general way, also. Chrisrus (talk) 19:14, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Long-established consensus is to not include these minor ranks on every article. For example, when you're reading about dogs, you don't need to know that nitty-gritty detail that the order Carnivora is in the infraclass Eutheria. However, if you look at the Carnivora article, it includes the direct two parent taxa: the superorder Laurasiatheria and the infraclass Eutheria. Here it is appropriate because it puts Carnivora into its appropriate context. We don't need all those higher taxonomic minor (NB: lower minor ranks like subgenus are sometimes necessary to understand species, of course) ranks cluttering up the species or genera articles. The information on taxonomic realignments should be in the highest rank affected, e.g. if Carnivora was realigned recently into a different superorder or infraclass, that should be mentioned there. Unranked clades are ok if they're major ones. Over at WP:PLANTS we've been dealing with the APG III system and its predecessors for years, all of them having unranked clades above order. But we don't include the minor unranked ones either, e.g. you don't need to know that Stylidiaceae is within euasterids II, however the order Asterales should certainly mention its immediate parent clade. Rkitko (talk) 22:04, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Sorry to disagree. You might be right in general, but having Eutheria in article dog does not really hurt (this is correct information). On the other hand, such reverts may hurt. The user looks like a newbie who acted in a good faith but had his edits reverted, although they are legitimate. Will he continue editing here? Possibly not. That's the damage.Biophys (talk) 23:11, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
I don't think so. The user now has a link to this discussion on his/her talk page where it's clearly explained why such edits are against consensus. And such edits, while adding correct information, can lead to more and more minor ranks cluttering up the taxobox. WP:BRD. The newbie was bold, I reverted, now we discuss. Nothing wrong here, no one bit the newbie. Rkitko (talk) 23:26, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Well, if he is really interested in participation, he should not be deterred. You are doing good work with plants.Biophys (talk) 00:33, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
I agree the high-level minor ranks are unnecessary. IMO the taxobox should be telescoping in design, expanding out when you dig down. The minor ranks are also arbitrary. Every animal will have tens, if not hundreds, of parent taxa. How do we decide which ones to include in the box? The simplest answer is to go with the ones at traditional, basic ranks, and only add minor ranks when they contribute something to the article other than some kind of meta table of contents. Otherwise, we'll be looking at articles where the taxobox is twice as long as the body text. MMartyniuk (talk) 01:37, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Yes. Just to give a taste of the extremes we could be reaching, squirrel could conceivably have entries for Neomura, Eukaryota, Opisthokonta, Holozoa, Eumetazoa, Bilateria, Deuterostomia, Craniata, Vertebrata, Gnathostomata, Osteichthyes, Actinopterygii, Tetrapodomorpha, Tetrapoda, Amniota, Synapsida, Therapsida, Holotheria, Zatheria, Boreosphenida, Theria, Eutheria, Placentalia, Boreoeutheria, Euarchontoglires, Glires, Sciuromorpha, and Sciuroidea (and no doubt more that I don't know), and the case for inclusion of many of those is as strong as the case for inclusion of Eutheria (which was the issue here). Ucucha 01:50, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello, everyone. I am eeeasterbunny. I teach Comparative Anatomy at a university in North Carolina, and one of the assignments that I'm about to give to my students is to use Wikipedia to determine which of the vertebrates on a list (that I'll give to the students) are members of which large taxa (the large taxa include Archosauria, Eutheria, Marsupialia, Teleostei, etc.). Seems to me the whole point of Wikipedia is to educate. I'm trying to take it one step further by actually using Wikipedia in a class. Please help my students out and let them see that an alligator is an archosaur and a human is a eutherian. When using Wikipedia for this assignment they'll stumble across all sorts of interesting info that they'll not get from class; it'll be so much better than a boring lecture! It would be so great to use Wikipedia in this manner, but if folks keep deleting these minor edits then the effort will be thwarted. Come on, Wikipedia colleagues: I know you're pro-education, or you wouldn't even be trying to correct mistakes on Wikipedia. Given all the criticism that other teachers level at Wikipedia, how about helping out a teacher who's trying to head in the opposite direction and make Wikipedia a tool for the classroom? Whaddayasay? Help a fellow out and quit deleting these minor edits? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eeeasterbunny (talk • contribs) 18:52, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

What if the next professor decides Archosauromorpha is a more important group than Archosauria and assigns that for her class? And the next, Ornithodira? As others have said, there are other ways to track down this info than listing it in the taxobox of every child taxon. MMartyniuk (talk) 02:19, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
I'm sympathetic to your cause, but one class assignment is not a reason to include these minor ranks against consensus. Your students can easily locate the information if they're good enough at searching or deductive reasoning, e.g. they can look at the Eutheria article and scan down the child taxa until they get to your target species, or they can work their way up from squirrel or whatever. Point is, these ranks are not supposed to be included on the articles you've been editing. Best, Rkitko (talk) 22:20, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
You might want to use wikispecies as they list more ranks than we do, but then the problem with that is that it doesn't have links to articles about the species! Smartse (talk) 23:36, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello everyone. Eeeasterbunny here again. I note this morning that every last one of my edits has been deleted. Every last one. Is there really a justifiable reason to delete "Marsupialia" from the koala page? Really? And to delete "Archosauria" from the alligator and dinosaur pages? I do understand that I might have overdone "Eutheria," but to delete every last edit, including ones that I think everyone can agree are sensible (e.g. the aforementioned, and the addition of taxboxes to "elephant," "salmon," and "trout;" the lack of taxboxes in these spots is pointless and frustrating to the user), is uncollegial, obnoxious, and just plain mean. Not just to me but to those for whose benefit I made the edits. A repository of useful informaton like Wikipedia should be exactly that--a repositiry of useful information. So when useful information is deleted it defeats the purpose of Wikipedia, and when useful information is deleted simply because it was put there by a specific person, that can be interpreted only as persecution. Colleagues, I plan to put back the few most sensible of the edits, in the hope that the uncollegial individual will exercise common sense and recognize that those few really are sensible. Hopefully nobody will complain about "Marsupialia" on the koala page, "Archosauria" on the crocodilian pages, and a few other sensible edits. But in acknowledgement of the majority consensus to leave minor ranks out of most taxboxes, I'll leave most of the rest un-redone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eeeasterbunny (talk • contribs) 15:48, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Please assume good faith on my part. No malice was intended. I assessed every edit and determined whether or not it was against current consensus on editing taxoboxes. I assume you have good intentions, but you seem to be unfamiliar with our guidelines, which isn't a bad thing; we're here to help you learn our guidelines. And if you have a compelling argument (one I have't seen yet) on why to include these ranks on these pages, then we're here to discuss that. Minor ranks, including Marsupialia, are not to be included in taxoboxes per our guidelines (WP:TX). Also, please note that articles like salmon and trout do not discuss a single taxon. Taxoboxes are appropriate only for articles describing a single monophyletic taxon. The salmon article describes several related taxa commonly called salmon, but it doesn't include all the species in the Salmonidae or even in a subfamily, tribe, or genus. Is that clear? Please don't make this personal (e.g. "uncollegial, obnoxious, and just plain mean") and stick to the discussion of consensus and guidelines. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 18:12, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

There's no good faith, just a very obvious personal vendetta. Case in point: every time I re-post "Marsupialia" in the koala taxbox, you delete it. "Marsupialia" is present in the taxboxes of the other marsupials, and for good reason: it is useful information. The only difference with the koala is that I'm the one who posted the information. When other people post this piece of useful information, you leave it alone, but when I post it, you delete it. You are completely out of line, sir, and need to stop. (Eeeasterbunny (talk) 21:03, 21 October 2010 (UTC))

That's not a personal vendetta, that's Rkitko editing according to the consensus that was previously reached. (It isn't a guideline though, WP:TX is only part of the manual of style). In this case I agree with you that, listing koala as a marsupial is a good idea, especially as you point out that other marsupials have it in their taxoboxes. It would have probably helped if you'd explained in the edit summary so that Rkitko could understand your reasoning. Smartse (talk) 21:39, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

And just for the record, Rkitko, as someone substantially your senior in years, as an educator in biology since before you began high school, and as someone with a peer-reviewed publication track record that includes several articles on biological systematics, I think it's not too arrogant to say that I am a good judge of what should be in a taxbox, because that is my area of professional expertise. A young whippersnapper (and believe it or not, I do mean that affectionately, because despite my being displeased with you, I do recognize that your pre-Eeeasterbunny editing track record shows that you have the best interests of Wikipedia at heart) ought to have some respect for the opinions of his elders, especially when they are experts on the subject matter at hand. So, young colleague, how about the dropping of the vendetta? Can a koala be a marsupial and an alligator an archosaur for #$*!$&%*!$'s sake? (Eeeasterbunny (talk) 21:15, 21 October 2010 (UTC))

Since much of the above seems to stray far from WP:BIOLOGY issues, I'll take my reply off this talk page and move my part of the discussion here: User talk:Eeeasterbunny#Continuation of WP:BIOLOGY discussion. Rkitko (talk) 01:59, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Topic Shift

This goes to show how great it would be if we could have some kind of interactive fractal zoom tree-of-life claddogram-in-a-box that would not only show you were you are but also be used to navigate. If you've ever been to the fourth floor of Natural History in Manhattan, it really spoils one. It's so much clearer to have your position clearly marked and how everything interrelates. I'd describe how it would work in my imagination more, but I hope that's enough for most you to see what I'm getting at and get you thinking. Anyway you are right, which taxa to include can't really be predicted because it all depends on what a person is trying to see/understand; the ranks I needed today to do what I was trying to do (navigate the pigs and whippos and Hell pigs to see how that area of even-toes all works) might not be the ranks another person navigating another area of mammals would need, and we can't have someone adding extra ranks for no clear reason because there are far too many, but some non-traditinal ranks may be helpful in undersanding the new mammal tree. Chrisrus (talk) 06:03, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree. How about something like that? This is just an idea. Biophys (talk) 17:59, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
Ok, but it should look like a tree, like the tree of life, or at least like a claddogram, but those are generally done with right angles. The article Cladistics says that it's much closer to the truth than the hierarchies of boxes in boxes that is taxonomy. You could zoom in and out and see where you are in relationship to everything else. When you go to the fourth floor of the museum of natural history in Manhattan, they have this big tree of life film at the beginning and then you zoom into the vertibrates and then each hallway is a bit of it with the same diagram repeated. So you don't have the Hall of Mammals or a room full of animals from the same emoch, but rather you move from fish to amphibian to reptile to dinosaur to bird, branching off at each feature. I'll find you a link. Chrisrus (talk) 21:49, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
You might also look at graphics used in WikiPathways, see discussion and links here. Biophys (talk) 14:29, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. I've left a message there. Do you think we could use that interactive pathway thing to turn this into a shape like this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrisrus (talk • contribs)
We already do have {{cladogram}} and {{clade}}, but they have some browser issues I identified on the talk page there. I could see a role for some kind of scalable, interactive cladogram of the tree of life on wikispecies maybe. Perhaps this is a premature question, but where would you propose to house this cladogram on Wikipedia? Article space, within articles (top, bottom, somewhere within)? Rkitko (talk) 12:11, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
On the fourth floor in the Museum of Natural History, each exhibit has a small close up of the place on the branch where you are. This I would like to see in the taxobox, from where I'd like to be able to call it up, to zoom in and out. Thank you for directing me to those templates, I'll check it out and then reply further. Chrisrus (talk) 13:09, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I see. Is your vision to replace the existing classification listing with a cladogram? Or in addition to the classification? If the latter, you may encounter resistance with any proposal to add to the taxobox; past discussions involving potential additions have focused on how cluttered or large it would make the taxobox. On the other hand, if you're thinking of replacing the hierarchical classification listing with a cladogram, I'm not sure that would be desirable. Cladograms are usually utilized to show relationships within a taxon (e.g. species in a genus, genera in a family, etc.) and wouldn't necessarily show higher taxa. That's the strength of a hierarchical listing for the classification. Rkitko (talk) 14:01, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
Yes, replacing or modifying taxoboxes would not be desiarable. But pictures like this are also very useful, except they are not interactive. Making them interactive might be a good idea if anyone wanted to invest his time in this.Biophys (talk) 21:16, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Book:Landmark experiments in biology

Hey all. I just created Book:Landmark experiments in physics, and wanted to create one on biology as well, but turns out I don't know much about the history of biology. While Category:Biology experiments exists I'm not really sure on how to organize the articles. So I thought I'd drop the project a line and maybe get someone to create it?

Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 08:06, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

best way to split and sort biology list of families

List of families (biology) is currently at the AFD. It list and links to all the Wikipedia articles that exist about the various families of life. How best could this be sorted? Some are arguing to delete the list entirely because it isn't 100% complete, or because some biologist argue over what family to stick something in. Please join in that discussion, we need some biologist to provide some input here. If it is split into various smaller articles, some of which already exist, then how best to sort the information then? Dream Focus 14:23, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

"It list and links to all the Wikipedia articles that exist about the various families of life." No, it doesn't, and it probably couldn't if it wanted to. Please try to understand this. --Stemonitis (talk) 14:26, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
It can with a dynamic list. Keep the discussion over there please. Dream Focus 15:46, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
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