Talk:Body plan

Untitled
Since this was about to be transwikied as a dicdef, I've fleshed it out using bits snipped from other relevant articles, combined with my limited layman's understanding of these issues. Can a qualified biologist please help lick this article into shape? -- The Anome 01:12, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Merge from body form
Last december I created body form, but never wrote much. This article - on the exact same thing - is an improvement on mine in every way, moreover, I think it may be titled under the correct term. I propose a merge - Jak (talk) 16:56, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Merge from bauplan
Bauplan seems to just be a german loanword to describe the exact same biological principal. I say merge - Jak (talk) 23:45, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

No objections from me, who initially wrote the article Bauplan. I have come across the word Bauplan several times in original (english language) works on evolution (Ernst Mayr uses it often, but the likes of Richard Dawkins, Mark Ridley etc. do too), and it has occurred to me as an original technical term. I think Ernst Mayr, in his comprehensive "What Evolition Is", pointed out that the term Bauplan captures a different turn meaning than the more generic term "body plan", but my recollection may be faulty. Then again, Mayr was an emigrated German. I will look it up in the book when I come home, and maybe add some better wording here. Then again, since both terms at least overlap to some extent, I can live with a merge and re-direct. --Emaraite 11:53, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Do not merge
Please don't merge. In North American biology at least, bauplan is a subtly different idea from the idea that bodies have a plan. The concept refers to an approach to the study of organisms. We note, for example, that the pre-cambrian explosion included three way symmetrical organisms that have since disappeared from the world. The concept of bauplan is not simply the 'body plan' but the approach to biology (paleobiology and developmental biology) that focuses on the evolutionary roots of organismal organization. This kind analysis examines why horseshoe crabs have existed for so long. Bauplan is a conceptual idea of evolutionarily stable forms not an archtectural truism that organism are organized. Acuster 20:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't merge!
Woodger introduced the term "Bauplan" in 1945 with the clear intention of setting up a technical term with a distinct meaning. Grahbudd 12:44, 8 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Please provide sources for this and for current usage of the term Bauplan in a way that it not nearly synonymous with "Body plan". The distinction would be substance for the Body plan article. DCDuring 16:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Merge and Cite
We should be happy with one well-referenced article on this concept and its near-clones. DCDuring 16:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Body plan is the basis for phylum
The article now states "Body plan is the basis for phylum." I believe this is correct (at least historically; I suppose in the future, genetic relationship may trump body plan as the basis for phylum). But it says later "The invertebrates employ a much more diverse array of body plans, such as seen in insects ..." This implies that insects have a body plan that differs from that of other arthropods. As I understand it, all arthropods have the same body plan, which is why arthropods are considered to be one phylum. If this is correct, wouldn't it be better to say "... such as seen in arthropods ..."?

Also, isn't there a more scientific or biological word than "pipe," to describe animals that have a mouth, an anus, and a hollow tube connecting the two? Perhaps "coelomate"? Anomalocaris (talk) 21:05, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Terrestrial and Edicarian
"The current range of body plans is far from exhausting the possible patterns for terrestrial life: the Ediacaran biota appears to contain numerous species and taxa with body plans quite different from any found in currently living organisms." The use of the word "terrestrial" is ambigious, as it can also refer to land dwelling organism and not generally organism living on Earth. The Edicarian biota was definitely marine. Kunadam (talk) 06:48, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Animal bias
All multicellular life forms have a body plan. This article had nothing at all (except one lone "fern") that had anything to do with non-animal life. In several places it spoke of "organisms" but what was meant was "animals", e.g. "The most basic and successful structure is the "pipe" or alimentary canal." is true only if the organism spoken of is an animal and not a plant. There was a section "Examples" but all three examples were animal examples. I think more work needs to be done on this article if the other editors want to make it universal to life, as indicated by the use of "organisms" in the opening sentence instead of "animals". Nick Beeson (talk) 18:43, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I rewrote this article to be just animal body plans. I did this for two reasons. First it was already that way. Second since the article on body is also only about animals. In addition, Google "animal body plan" currently brings up 280,000 hits, vs 35,000 for "plant body plan". That is an 8:1 ratio.
 * I removed weasel words, e.g. "many", "most", "fantastic", etc.
 * I removed the comments about the Cambrian explosion which were not relevant, but left those that were on topic.
 * In several places "animal", and "organism" were used loosely, e.g. "animal" was used to mean "land vertebrate". I replaced these usages with the specific phrase meant. Nick Beeson (talk) 15:34, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Chrisrus (talk) 18:13, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Body plans ... category ...
The article ought, I think, to discuss and name at least the major body plans - the tube-right-through and the blind-ending-gut (like flatworms) being two, and the endo- vs exoskeleton thing being two more - it's obvious the body plan way of thinking isn't exactly taxonomic.

Each such body plan should be covered in either a subsidiary article or a section of this one; and I'd have thought should be covered by a category. At the moment the category 'Body plans' is almost unused, only containing 4 (random) taxa - probably none of which should be in 'Body plans' directly. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:25, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

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