Talk:Portuguese man o' war

Someone seems to have changed the first line to read “Japaneseman” — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:3A40:8810:588:5CF4:21E9:E288 (talk) 01:11, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

"Sting no more" commercial?
The mention of the sting-no-more study, conveniently sponsored by sting-no-more seems like an advertorial. Also conflicting info wrt vinager being yes or no effective? Suggest: remove the last lines related to treatment. remove mention of suspicious study. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:982:50E7:1:3C8A:D20C:78E:A292 (talk) 21:29, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Only species, or not?
The "Man o' war" disambiguation page lists "Portuguese man o' war" (this article), and also "Physalia utriculus" ("Indo-Pacific Portuguese man o' war, a similar species found in the Indo-Pacific") -- which also redirects to this page.

The sidebar ("speciesbox") says this page is about "Physalia physalis".

This article currently says: "The Portuguese man o' war is the only species in the genus Physalia, which in turn is the only genus in the family Physaliidae."

The reference on that sentence points to https://australian.museum/learn/animals/jellyfish/bluebottle/ which says it's about "Physalia utriculus", instead, and contains the sentence "The only other species, Physalia physalis, the Portugese man-o-war is found in the Atlantic ocean."

So I don't know what's going on with this article, but it looks wrong. How can we improve this? It looks like the genus has two species, and this article is (maybe?) about the entire genus. But I'm not a biologist and this is a bit confusing.
 * The genus is monotypic as Physalia utriculus is no longer recognised. Reference now updated/replaced in text. Loopy30 (talk) 13:19, 24 October 2021 (UTC)


 * In the beginning of the article it still refers to Physalia utriculus as the other species in the genus. Later on in the article (second to last paragraph in overview) bluebottle is used as a name, which is quite confusing to me, since the beginning of the article states that this is a different species. Some clarification from someone with understanding would be appreciated! 83.252.193.197 (talk) 10:13, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

In the article on the genus Physalia, it states: "The species Physalia utriculus is given the common name Pacific man o' war to distinguish it from the more widely distributed and larger Physalia physalis, the Portuguese man o' war."

But this article claims: "[Physalia physalis] is considered to be the same species as the Pacific man o' war, which is found mainly in the Pacific Ocean."

So which is it? Are they separate species or the same species? These two excerpts contradict each other. One needs to be corrected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.91.36.8 (talk) 09:14, 17 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Merged Physalia utriculus into this article, and updated lede. I'm not sure what happened here - when we had the merger discussion some time ago, there was consensus for merging, which then ran into unclear issues and seems to have just petered out without implementation. As far as I can see, the status of P. utriculus as a synonymous name has not been challenged, and this remains the accepted form. Accordingly I have merged and redirected the other article. Ping: -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 11:06, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The merge discussion did not peter out, but was in fact implemented in March, 2019. From the edit history of the Physalia utriculus page, this update was reverted in January 2022 - producing the discrepancies that led to the current question by the IP above and the need to once more complete the merge. Loopy30 (talk) 12:05, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Oy. I had not realized that the revert happened ony this January, without any discussion - thought that was something that had taken place in 2019. That explains some of the oddities. Well, in either case I can't see a good reason for it, nor consensus? -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 12:11, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Why they are called Portuguese man of war
Give me answer 2400:ADC5:165:FB00:8558:1D06:4654:3FF9 (talk) 17:20, 22 February 2022 (UTC)


 * RTFA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war#Etymology Theturbolemming (talk) 19:11, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

"Coloniality"
The confusing nature of the "coloniality" claim is touched on in other topics of this page. The article currently has this in the eponymous section:

All zooids in a man o' war develop from the same single fertilized egg and are therefore genetically identical; they remain physiologically connected throughout life, and essentially function as organs in a shared body. Hence, a Portuguese man o' war constitutes a single individual from an ecological perspective, but is made up of many individuals from an embryological perspective.

It's not clear how this colony creature is any different any multicellular organism and how zooids are different from cells. There needs to be more explanation of zooids are "many individuals from an embryological perspective". What exactly does that mean?

The first part of the paragraph/section might be supposed to function as an explanation, but the text is pretty opaque:

The man o' war is described as a colonial organism because the individual zooids in a colony are evolutionarily derived from either polyps or medusae, i.e. the two basic body plans of cnidarians. Both of these body plans comprise entire individuals in non-colonial cnidarians (for example, a jellyfish is a medusa; a sea anemone is a polyp).

Reading very carefully, it sounds like there's a similarity between the body plans of different zooids in the PMoW and that of polyps and medusae, which are separate individual creatures. Weak sauce. It sounds like saying, "Well, some of your cells look like this animal, and others of your cells looks like this other animal, so that means you're really a collection of individuals." Resemblance of cells to complete organisms is not really what most people would expect when hearing something is a colony of individuals. The science here can't be that bogus, can it? What's missing from the article?

JKeck (talk) 13:36, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Siphonophore = jellyfish?
Siphonophores are cnidarians with a medusa phase, so it is inaccurate to describe them as an entirely separate thing to jellyfish. They may not be true jellyfish, but neither are box jellies and those are clearly jellyfish. What do you all think? Siphonophore-enthusiast (talk) 13:02, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Certainly it's an unclear term. Invasive Spices (talk) 18:35, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Physalia into Portuguese man o' war
The proposer of this merge is, and they may provide the reasons for this merge. &mdash; CrafterNova  [ TALK ] [ CONT ] 11:18, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Since Physalis is a genus of approximately 75 to 90 flowering plants in the nightshade family, I very much doubt that it is the intended target here. My guess is that Physalia was meant. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:33, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't see any reason why either Physalis or Physalia should be merged into this article. Mooonswimmer 14:57, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, Physalia is meant, yes, this is a really bad merge proposal, and yes, the article must be merged, because the genus is monotypic - the two species originally recognized have been considered conspecific for the last 17 years. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:09, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Then support merge, per – it's a relief that someone (unlike me!) actually knows what they're talking about here. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:43, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * support merge Physalia with Portuguese man o' war in this case (monotypic genus) DiverDave (talk) 02:28, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Also support, monotypic genus, no reason for it to exist Jokullmusic 02:25, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Overview plagarism
The overview section copies directly from the introduction of a cited source without any quotes or attribution. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6820529) Yubbo (talk) 15:52, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * From my understanding, using the exact words of the article, then adding an attrubution at the end still counts as plagarism.
 * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copying_text_from_other_sources
 * states, "As a general rule, do not copy text from other sources. Doing so usually constitutes both a copyright violation and plagiarism." Yubbo (talk) 15:40, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Epipelagic has removed this header with no clear justification: it's not egregious to ask about this, regardless of what the answer is. Removing the header and answering a question like this via user talk and edit summary is borderline unacceptable.


 * Okay. So I removed Yubbo's unfounded claim and had the following exchange with them on their talk page...


 * Unfounded accusations of plaigarism are a serious matter. Before you make (repeated) accusations of plagiarism, as you have here, you should check the copyright status and permissions that apply to the article you claim is being plagiarised. — Epipelagic (talk) 20:14, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This article still says "In most cases, you may not copy text from other sources into Wikipedia. Doing so is a copyright violation. Always write the articles in your own words and cite the sources of the article." These accusations also were founded, because in the link to my accusation of plagiarism, I linked the source that was plagiarized from (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6820529).
 * It also isn't allowed to make small changes to the original work. "Superficial change of copyright-protected text is not enough. Wikipedia articles must be written in the author's own words. If the way in which a source has said something is important, please employ quotation."
 * There are still no quotes used, so it is plagiarism. Yubbo (talk) 21:09, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You are merely quoting from an informal explanatory essay, not a Wikipedia guideline or policy. At least read the rest of the essay before cherry-picking quotes you think support your case. If you look further down the same essay, you will find a section called: Can I copy from open license or public domain sources?. That is the section that applies here. If you want a better grasp of the issues, read the relevant Wikipedia guidelines and policies, and don't cherry pick from essays. Further, you are linking to a copy of the article which is on the website of the National Library of Medicine (USA). The original article in question was published by Nature. — Epipelagic (talk) 23:54, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * In the interests of drama, Remsense has reinstated this issue. They also made a claim, which they have now deleted, that the "offending passages" were not attributed. But these passages ARE attributed. — Epipelagic (talk) 02:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Epipelagic, I made an embarrassing error based on misreading the article page: I simply did not see the attribution template the first time, somehow. It was negligence on my part, and I apologize. Remsense  留  02:15, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

My recent change:
The American study cited notes both that Nematocytes can be triggered by vinegar, but also contradictorily states vinegar is a treatment for bluebottles (which contain nematocytes), so I left it out. DavidSmith2018 (talk) 23:35, 29 March 2024 (UTC) DavidSmith2018 (talk) 23:35, 29 March 2024 (UTC)