Talk:Mariana mallard

Article Issues
There are a lot of assumptions and "probably"s in this article. It seems that this is unverified claims/speculation. Examples from a quick read through:
 * Ducklings were probably intermediate in plumage...
 * The voice can be assumed to have resembled...
 * ...these were probably vagrant migrating ducks...
 * ...although up-ending was not observed, they probably utilized it too.
 * Hunting pressure was probably heavy...
 * Many Anas species probably separated less than 100.000 years ago
 * ...as a distinct new life-form is produced in this process, which does probably not resemble...

This sentence seems contradictory, or at least confusing:
 * Hunting pressure was probably heavy, despite a ban on gun ownership under Japanese control (1914-1945), as the birds were unwary to be trapped, and at any rate the gun ban was lifted after World War II (see also below). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mech Aaron (talk • contribs) 14:36, 24 June 2009

Since these sections have been tagged for so long, I've removed them here:

Ducklings were probably intermediate in plumage between the two progenitor species, somewhat duller than mallard or somewhat more vividly colored than Pacific Black Duck downy young.

Hidden comment:

should be correct, but check Philips, J.C. (1923): "A natural history of the ducks, vol. 2" to be able to remove "probably"

And on the voice:

The voice can be assumed to have resembled the Mariana Mallard's parent species'; possibly, the females' quacking was hoarser than in the mallard.

—innotata (Talk • Contribs) 18:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Synonyms
FWIE claims that the first description was in Bonaparte's Consp. Gen. Avium vol. 2 (as a variant of the mallard). I can find no such reference: strangely, the entire Anseriformes seems to be missing from the Gallica copy, but as they are not in the index either and the page numbers are in accord with the bibliographic references, the issue is completely muddy. But as they explicitly state that the page is a draft and may hold incorrect information... they are certainly wrong about Hartert placing the MM as mallard subspecies. He explicitly states, "...wyvilliana of Hawaii, laysanensis of Laysan and oustaleti of the Marianne [sic] Islands. The latter three species [my emphasis] are evidently rather recent derivatives of the mallard, A. platyrhynchos...". But still: Bonaparte's work lacking the entire Anseriformes seems too weird to be true. Dysmorodrepanis 16:50, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see: Bonaparte died before he got around to doing the ducks. Consider the matter settled. Maybe some other paper by Bonaparte tho. Dysmorodrepanis 05:22, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

As I learned the Mariana Mallard is only a hybrid of two other species: of the Anas plythyrhynchos ans A. superciliosa. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.124.34.196  (talk • contribs)  12:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Name authorities
It is very redundant to write original authority for reassignments (is not commonly done), that's what parenthesis is for. FunkMonk (talk) 01:07, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't understand what you're proposing. You have to write the original authority, in parentheses; the authors who reassigned it can be added optionally. The only other option is to list reassignments without authorities after them, which in my view defeats part of the purpose of the taxobox synonymy in summing up the taxonomic history of the species. &mdash;innotata 01:14, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * It is the standard as far as I have seen. The authority who reassigned the species is written in parenthesis. See for example the species synonyms in Tyrannosaurus. FunkMonk (talk) 01:23, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * That isn't what's done at Tyrannosaurus; there, they only give the original author in the synonymy. See how all the names with the specific epithet amplus cite Marsh—he didn't change his name what genus the species was in half a dozen times in a single year. Not that much info is lost by doing so in that article, but doing that here would mean appending "Salvadori, 1894" to all of them. Parentheses are only used around the original authority, after the genus is changed (I messed that up here, but I fixed it). I can find the part of the ICZN that says this… &mdash;innotata 01:31, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * In that case, there is considerable inconsistency in the literature. Where do they use the scheme you added? FunkMonk (talk) 01:38, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think so, maybe you're just confused: it is common to give only the original authority. Here's what the ICZN says in ch. 11: "Citation of person making new combination. If it is desired to cite both the author of a species-group nominal taxon and the person who first transferred it to another genus, the name of the person forming the new combination should follow the parentheses that enclose the name of the author of the species-group name…Example: Methiolopsis geniculata (Stål, 1878) Rehn, 1957" I suppose doing this in cases other than genus reassignments isn't according to the code recommendation, but it is done, and is hardly confusing.
 * So, what do you propose we do? The only alternatives are dropping the reassignments, or at least those other than Kuroda's, or dropping authorities from the synonymy entirely. &mdash;innotata 01:53, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Worked pretty well as it was so far, reassignments are obvious, when one can see the specific name is the same as in the original binomial. What do you propose? Arbitrarily applying this scheme on a few articles seems a bit pointless. FunkMonk (talk) 02:08, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * What was there before was something I added a while ago, that's only often used for mammals—using colons for reassignments—and it's wrong as well as obscure. So I'd like to either keep it as is, the only problem you've brought up is that it's longer. &mdash;innotata 02:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I've never mentioned length, as far as I recall, my main concern is inconsistency. FunkMonk (talk) 02:26, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

It seems like you're proposing to use parentheses around the name of the person who reassigned a taxon (I assume that you're not proposing to use the mammal convention again or to give the names of reassigners without parentheses). This is simply wrong, and it's highly confusing no matter how much it is done on Wikipedia, so we need to fix that wherever it exists. And I haven't seen this error often, as most simply cite the original author like Tyrannosaurus does, so I don't see a consistency issue. Using the names of reassigners without parentheses is not supported by the code and nearly as confusing, but I don't think I've ever seen it done on Wikipedia. &mdash;innotata 02:48, 18 August 2014 (UTC) PS: If there is a consistency issue, it's whether to give reassigners at all. Most articles don't. Here, Salvadori is the only person (at least so far as we know so far) to describe this taxon as a species, so if we wanted to be consistent in such a manner, we would have only his name after each of the synonyms. &mdash;innotata 02:51, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * No, I'm simply proposing that what this article had before was fine, it showed the original author in its own field, and recombination authors under synonyms. When the original author is already in the first field, there is little reason to show it again every time a new recombination is listed, because we do not show a recombination in isolation, but always adjacent to the original binomial, so no one is confused. If this wasn't the case, I would of course think otherwise. FunkMonk (talk) 14:47, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, again, that was the mammal format, with colons, that I shouldn't have used. Or if you removed the colons, it would be confusing because it'd suggest the reassignment authors each described the species again, under the same name. (This does happen often.) Look, you might be the only person who's made the mistake of listing new combinations this way on Wikipedia. It's simply not correct. &mdash;innotata 17:41, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * What colons? I'm not talking about some "new way", I'm talking about how it has pretty much always been in taxoboxes. See for example the synonym list of Great auk, which I didn't write. Recombination authors are listed, without original author immediately preceding them in every case. FunkMonk (talk) 18:01, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The colons are what this article had before (since I added them some years ago), take a look. Well, as I have stated that isn't in accordance with the ICZN, isn't done in the literature quite the same way, and can be confusing (definitely so in the great auk article; I imagine it's likely people gave duplicate descriptions of that species in the early days). I don't see how the fact that people make this mistake on Wikipedia sometimes (not so often I expect since most articles I've seen only list original authorities or don't list authorities at all) makes it OK to keep it around. &mdash;innotata 18:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The auk synonyms I'm referring to are specially the recombinations, where the same species name is used, not the completely new names. FunkMonk (talk) 18:53, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The point is, how would I know that, with this format? They could be people re-describing a species using the same name as someone else used previously; that happened a lot in the past (eg, lots of Linnaeus' species, and most East Coast passerines because they were given Latin names pre-Linnaeus, or the saxaul sparrow). That's less likely in the case of the Mariana mallard, but we should be consistent with those species in articles on taxa like this, and follow the ICZN. &mdash;innotata 19:16, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, as I asked earlier, who is going to enforce this then? Does using the scheme some arbitrary places really make a difference? And no, I don't think removing such synonyms entirely is a better idea, I'd propose leaving it as it is on Great Auk. Perhaps this discussion should be taken in a more "public" place than this obscure talk page? FunkMonk (talk) 19:21, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Look, if something's simply incorrect and confusing in many places, you fix it wherever you find the problem. For the record, I said the other options beside formatting recombinations after the ICZN are 1) only listinng the original authority or 2) listing synonyms with no authorities—still the most popular style on Wikipedia. I'll start a thread at WT:ANIMAL &mdash;innotata 19:43, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * As long as it isn't randomly applied, I can support it. FunkMonk (talk) 19:46, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's good. That said, I'm personally not interested in searching out articles with this issue; I have enough tedious things I want to do on the wiki as is. I've started the thread, I hope I've understood what you're trying to say well enough. &mdash;innotata 20:05, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

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