Talk:Stylidium

Species list
I've included as complete a list that I could find from the literature. This website (in German) lists every name known include vars., but many of the species names are synonyms of other established species, so the list in the article contains most of those. That's why the total is 316, but from most reports I read there are only approximately 230 species. I've also included some species that were reported in early literature (1920s) that may have been renamed or moved to a different genus after further phylogenetic study. I've also been adding common names as I run across them. I plan to go back, species by species, and remove the synonyms from the list and place them in parenthesis next to the most common name. This can be difficult, though, as google isn't very forthcoming with hits for these species names. And the difference between Stylidium leptorhizum and Stylidium leptorrhizum, for example, appears to only be preferential spelling, though one is reported to have a var. pilosum while the other doesn't. I'll continue on. Feel free to help. Rkitko 10:50, 17 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Rkitko. I took a look around, and you are right: There don't seem to be any good sources of species lists on the web! I guess you are going to be building the definitive list. :) I would suggest that at some point you make a seperate page for the list of species (as I have done with Pinguicula and Drosera) so that the main page doesn't get too long. Keep up the good work! --NoahElhardt 20:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Noah. Thanks for taking a look!  I actually just got an e-mail back from one of the authors of the Darnowski references I cited.  He said there actually are 300+ species now, so the list might be fairly accurate.  He said a colleague of his is currently writing a comprehensive book that should cover as many species as possible, so I will be looking forward to that in the coming months.  I meant to ask you about moving the species list over to a new article--you read my mind and answer the question I had not asked yet!  Thanks!  -Rkitko 01:46, 19 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Separate list completed. My CTRL-V (paste) keys are practically worn out from changing that list into a wikilinked.  Let me know what else you think I can do to improve this article.  I'm working on obtaining photos (growing my own triggerplants!  Specifically S. affine, S. fimbriatum, and S. laricifolium), since there aren't any fair use images on the web that I've found.  Thanks!  Rkitko 21:25, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Good Work! This article is looking really nice. Why don't you add an External Links section and then apply for good article status? :) --NoahElhardt 21:39, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

GA pass
An excellent, well-written and well-referenced article. My only suggestion would be to try to find a photo that gives a better idea of the appearance of the plants. TimVickers 02:24, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Great, thanks! I'm working on the photos--fair use or PD ones are hard to come by! There are some on a few Australian government websites, but I wasn't sure if photos produced by the Australian government were public domain. Thanks again; I'll continue to work on this article and try to bring it to even higher standards. --Rkitko 02:34, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

photo of fly getting "attacked"
I added a photo of a flower in the act of hitting a fly, which I thought would be compelling for this page. It was removed  because there are already pictures of the pollinator (although none of it "in action"). Its not the highest quality scan around, but it looks reasonable at this resolution and is otherwise technically good. I appropriate that there are already a lot of (very good) photos on this page, so I wont add it back right away without a discussion here. ErikHaugen (talk) 21:10, 4 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I did remove it because there are already many images on this article. It would be nice to have an action photo, but we shouldn't have so many that it overwhelms the text. I have been meaning to update this article with new text, probably amounting to several new or expanded paragraphs, which would make space for new images. Would it be alright if you gave me a week or so to tackle that project to then put the image back? I see you got permission from Sherwin Carlquist to use that image; does that apply to all the images on his website? Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 02:16, 5 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Oops, I meant to say "I appreciate that there are already a lot" not "appropriate" - stupid autocomplete. Yeah, no rush, or leave it out entirely, whatever you think is best. I think it's all the images on his website, at least in the images_500 directory. I'm slowly uploading them. If you post a url to a .jpg here I'll do it next if you like or feel free to do it yourself - but please leave me a note on my talk page so I don't duplicate it. Thank you! ErikHaugen (talk) 03:05, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Carnivory
This section was a bit speculative. I think it is less so now - I 'tidied' a few sentences. One described the fact that some Stylidium species occur in the same ecosystems as some other carnivorous plants. This is very weak - growing nearby is not evidence of shared strategy. In fact, both Drosera and Stylidium species are so numerous and widespread in (temperate at least) Australian plant communities that a huge number (almost all?) of other Australian terrestrial plant species are likely to have at least one species from each genus growing nearby - and by this logic are carnivorous. The second paragraph described a four year old abstract of an oral paper, there needs to be better referencing than this to make this point - surely the paper is published by now, preferably in a peer reviewed journal (not self published by the author). + the paragraph was about the abstract, not the carnivory.

I also removed a sentence on the triggerplant society as it is stated to be inactive. Bpinab (talk) 09:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Speculation is fine, as long as it is verifiable and sourced to reliable sources. I reverted most of your changes as I think they reduced the amount of valid information the article contained. Some notes:
 * Yes, the habitat association argument is weak. The article notes this, as did the original reference cited. I see no reason not to include this statement. The habitat and physiology combined are what make it a stronger argument, considering that these plants are known to capture insects in the field.
 * As far as I know, the 2007 abstract has not been turned into a paper. A note, though, that it was not self-published, it was submitted and accepted to be presented at that meeting. This is more than a self-published source. And certainly reliable.
 * The International Triggerplant Society is up and running now, having published two issues of their journal. The information just needed to be updated, not removed.
 * I'm not opposed to rewording these sections, just as long as we don't subtract good information. Rkitko (talk) 16:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was referring to the precedent of Darnowski's book, which I believe is self published.
 * As far as I can tell the only evidence for carnivory (and it is good evidence) is the paper which shows digestion. That the fact that species co-occur says absolutely nothing about carnivory and I disagree that it supports the argument from digestion. In fact I think that stating it actually weakens the argument based on the physiology evidence - by sounding like special pleading. There is a danger of appearing like a non-neutral supporter of the idea of carnivory because of an interest in the result. (This interest perhaps being a desire to recognise more carnivorous plants: this also appears in the 2006 paper where the authors appear to want all Stylidium spp to be carnivorous - which is a long way from being demonstrated. Not accusing, just trying to avoid the appearance of non-neutrality in the article). Of course there is a case for carnivory, but I think that stating the co-occurrence argument makes it seem dubious and open to this criticism. So, I strongly recommend the removal of the co-occurrence paragraph. The argument for carnivory from digestion is sufficient on its own, and it is more neutral and stronger in the absence of the co-occurrence argument.
 * Generally scientists do accept online abstracts as evidence if it is not saying anything too controversial, if they are not too old (otherwise - where is the paper, if not published, is there a problem with the work?) and if the conference is of some standing (eg where abstracts are reviewed before acceptance). Abstracts are not covered in WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Also, abstracts required to be submitted some months before a conference do not always reflect the actual content of the talk/research - which might not even be completed at the time of submission. For these reasons, I suggest that the abstract referenced here is borderline questionable as evidence for the key process of nutrient uptake. Bpinab (talk) 05:39, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You make a compelling case, though again I note that the threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth. That the argument for co-occurrence is speculative and weak is clear, but it was noted in a reliable source. Worded appropriately, I don't think there's any cause for concern of violating WP:NPOV with respect to supporting this view. If you see room for improvement in the way the paragraph is worded to make it more neutral, that would be great. I would also be open to the possibility of moving the information to the distribution and habitat section that would describe the other species it grows near, perhaps with a clause that says something to the effect of "[grows with other carnivorous species foo and bar], which has been discussed as another piece of evidence for carnivory in the genus." We are not here to argue the merits of the co-occurrence argument or to argue whether including it weakens the other evidence; our task is to present all these bits of information from reliable sources in a neutral manner.
 * I wondered the same things about the abstract. I can e-mail the author and ask. I've had papers presented at meetings in the past that were submitted for publication, had the reviewers ask for additional experiments, and by that time the student that had been doing that work graduated or we lost funding, so it never got published. There are plausible reasons why, even if it was good science, it has not been published yet. (As an aside, foliar absorption of nutrients is so common in all plants that personally I wonder why many consider it as key evidence for carnivory.) I'm not particularly attached to this reference, so I think for now we can wait for a better reference. I'll go ahead and remove the offending material.
 * Thanks for taking the time to discuss this; I think we'll end up making the article much better. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 15:19, 8 October 2011 (UTC)