Talk:Acantharea

Untitled
''Is this a family, genus, or what? article just says "group".''

That was deliberate. Right now relationships among the major groups of protists are very unclear, so many workers in the field have abandoned taxonomic ranks for the time being, and the remainder don't pay very much attention to them. This is simply because they are too likely to change back and forth to be of any use. The Acantharea themselves are variously ranked as anything from a subclass (or even order) up to a phylum, depending on whether one tries to retain the Radiolaria, Actinopoda and Sarcodina as taxa, replace them with other groups, or simply abandon them and promote the subdivisions. I figured it would be best not to worry about this and leave them unranked until some day when the taxonomy hopefully stabilizes.

I am not a fan of abandoning taxonomic levels but in this case it is almost certainly sensibleJeremy Young (talk) 15:19, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Structure
I would like to recommend that the subject of "Müllerian law" be moved to a separate article on that subject. This would allow reference to that article and removal of the explanation of that law within this article, thus cleaning the structure of this article. I do not have the background or expertise to write such an article. It appears that other forms of life have "spines" following this pattern. I assume this because the easiest reference I can find to "Müllerian law" is "Müllerian law of Icosacantha" within the reports from the H.M.S. Challenger Voyage of Exploration (1873-1877). Within these reports, there are many references to this law in conjunction with different species. If I am incorrect, and the species names referenced in this very old set of documents all relate to the subject of this article, in short, if this law only applies to Acantharea, then please disregard this recommendation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sdfosterc (talk • contribs) 00:02, 15 October 2013 (UTC)