User:ManfromButtonwillow/Sandbox2

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Structure and criteria for inclusion
Articles should normally be about particular taxa. For example:


 * '''Class: Actinopterygii
 * Order: Catfish, Cypriniformes
 * Family: Gourami, Centrarchidae
 * Genus: Black bass, Lepomis
 * Species: Largemouth bass, Micropterus salmoides

If a family has only a single genus, the family name should redirect to the article on the genus (e.g., Elassomatidae). If a genus has only a single species, the generic name should redirect to the species (e.g., Centrarchus).

When a genus contains only a small number of similar species, the articles may be combined with the article on the genus (e.g., Crappie, which includes the white crappie, Pomoxis annularis, and the black crappie, P. nigromaculatus.)

Also see the lists at Tkinias/Fish, Gæa/Fishes, SpeciesFishes1, SpeciesFishes2, SpeciesFishes3, and MarineFishList

Common names
Common names should be written in sentence case rather than title case, following normal English usage and that of FishBase. (This contrasts with the WikiProject_Birds, which follows the practice in many ornithology journals of using title casing for bird common names.) Use, for example, "largemouth bass", not "Largemouth Bass". Note that geographical or personal names which form part of a fish's common name remain capitalized, hence "Guadalupe bass" (in reference to the Guadalupe River in Texas) or "White Cloud Mountain minnow" (in reference to White Cloud Mountain in China).

Systematic names

 * Use systematic or "scientific" names according to established biological usage.
 * Capitalize and do not italicize names of taxa higher than genus such as the family Exocoetidae.
 * Capitalize and italicize generic names, such as Xiphophorus .
 * Italicize but do not capitalize specific epithets.
 * Refer to species using full names, e.g., Xiphophorus hellerii or X. hellerii but never  hellerii.
 * Neither italicize nor capitalize anglicizations of systematic names (e.g., "the pumpkinseed is a perciform fish").

Article titles
Article naming for WP:FISH differs, as detailed below, from Naming conventions (fauna).

Use the common name for any species that satisfies at least one of the following criteria: Use the Latin name for any species that fails to satisfy criteria 1(i) to 1(iv), including such situations as the following: Guidelines
 * 1(i) The species has a single common name that is widely used and never used for any other species. While the species in question may have additional common names, those names are rarely used. Example: Greenland halibut.
 * 1(ii) The species has a widely recognised common name that is so rarely applied to other species that confusion as to the subject of the article is unlikely to arise. Example: Guppy.
 * 1(iii) Within the area where the species is endemic and/or of commercial importance, only a single common name is used by the relevant legal, conservation, fisheries or local institutions, even though other common names may exist. Example: Atlantic salmon.
 * 1(iv) The species has a common name that is normally separated from similar common names by use of geographical, descriptive, or other modifications to those names. Once differentiated, these names satisfy criteria i, ii, or iii above. Examples: Shovelnose sturgeon, Little shovelnose sturgeon, False shovelnose sturgeon.
 * 2(i) The same common name is regularly applied to multiple species. Example: Green spotted puffer.
 * 2(ii) There is no single common name used for the species in question. Example: Black widow tetra (a.k.a. Black tetra, Petticoat tetra)
 * 2(iii) The species has different common names in different English-speaking countries. Example Plec (UK), Pleco (US).
 * 2(iv) The species simply has no widely used common name. Example: Dermogenys sumatrana.
 * Regardless of the title used, all articles should include the scientific name in italics and all significant English common names in bold in the first paragraph (and preferably the first sentence) and in such a way that it clearly differentiates the fish from other species with which it might be confused, for example by mentioning geographical distribution.
 * The guppy (Poecilia reticulata) also known as the millionsfish, is a small fresh and brackish water fish from Central America.


 * All reasonable attempts should be made to include disambiguations to species with which the present one might be confused. Disambiguations can be done by explaining the ambiguity in the first paragraph of the article with links to other fish (tilapia) or the addition of a disambiguation tag (freshwater hatchetfish).
 * The following is a simple format of disambiguation tag.
 * This article is about the ; for the see .


 * Creation of a disambiguation page especially in the case that the ambiguity involves many fish. Example: tigerfish.
 * Before renaming articles, discuss the reasons for doing so on the Talk page.
 * In cases of disputed naming, where a consensus cannot be reached on the articles Talk page, the matter should be discussed at WP:FISH to allow a consensus decision to be reached.

Higher taxa
Articles on higher taxa should be titled using the common name, if one exists and is unambiguous. Otherwise, the scientific epithet should be used. For example, Micropodia is known commonly and unambiguously as the black basses. The Centrarchidae, however are the sunfishes, which is a term commonly (if loosely) used for a variety of taxa, especially those of genus Lepomis but also of unrelated fishes (see Sunfish). The article is therefore titled using the scientific epithet. When FishBase or other references give a common name of "xes and ys" or "xes or ys" for a higher taxon, the scientific epithet (possibly anglicized) should be used for the article title.

Articles on taxa above the generic level should be titled with the Latin form of the name and not the anglicization, e.g. Cyprinidae not cyprinid, and Perciformes not perciform. The anglicizations may be freely used in article text, however.

Taxonomy
For the sake of consistency, fish articles should follow FishBase taxonomy. If a taxon's classification is disputed, the article text should explain this.

Categorization
Wikipedia categories should be created for well-known families, using the plural of the common name of the family (Category:Sunfishes or Category:Cyprinids), and for orders, using the common name (e.g., Category:Catfishes) or the scientific epithet (e.g., Category:Cyprinodontiformes). For very small families (e.g., the pygmy sunfishes), only the order category may be used, but usage must be consistent among members of a family.

Taxoboxes
All articles on taxa should have taxoboxes (constructed using the taxobox template, not built from scratch) including kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. The new taxa above class should not be indicated, since they can be found elsewhere in Wikipedia. Taxa between class and order should not be used, since they are unstable and can be found in the class and order articles. For large taxa, intermediate classifications may be indicated in the taxobox. For example, Perciformes should indicate their suborder and (if one exists) superfamily, and members of large families should indicate subfamilies. All members of a taxon should, however, be consistent in the usage of intermediate classifications.

See WikiProject Tree of Life/taxobox usage for the full details of taxobox construction.

An example taxobox, for the warmouth (Lepomis gulosus), is given at right. Note that the specific name is L. gulosus, not simply gulosus, and that the generic name is not bolded, since the article is not about the entire genus Lepomis.

Images
An image should be included in the taxobox if an appropriate one is available.

Higher taxa should use images reflecting their types, if possible. For example, Lepomis uses an image of L. auritus, the redbreast sunfish, which is the type species of the genus, while Centrarchidae uses an image of Centrarchus macropterus, the flier, which is the type (and only) species of Centrarchus, the type genus of Centrarchidae.

The taxobox image should ideally picture a single fish, facing left, in a horizontal orientation, cropped to 20 percent of the fish's length around the fish's body, and should be 250 pixels wide. (The image should not be resized manually; the full-size image should be uploaded and markup used to create the 250px image. Note that very large images may be resized before upload so that they will fit in a normal browser window when enlarged.)  For articles long enough to warrant inclusion of additional images, these may be placed as thumbnails in the article body, ideally showing the fish in its native environment.

Note that images of fishes which do not possess right-left symmetry should not be flipped to obtain a left-facing fish; doing so would, for example, convert a righteye flounder into a lefteye flounder.

Text captions should not be used on taxobox images in species articles, but in articles on higher taxa, the article caption should indicate the species pictured (if known), in the format " Common name (Genus species) ". If the species depicted is not known, the caption should identify the fish as closely as possible, as in "Pygmy sunfish (Elassoma sp.)"



It is always beneficial to have a picture that communicates a sense of scale. This can be achieved by Anyway, any image is better than no image - esp. if you have only third party material available, or if you don't want to get the animal out of its living environment.
 * placing standard sized physical objects next to the fish (human hand or body, tape measure, etc), before taking the photo. Sometimes the background scenery will already do the job.
 * painting a measuring scale into an existing image, if you know its exact scale (that's not the same as knowing the average size of the species, btw).
 * painting a reference shape (human silhouette, etc) into the picture, if your idea about the scale is less accurate.
 * painting a measuring scale is highly unscientific if it is based on nothing but a guess. In this case you should use the image as it is!

Introduction
The first paragraph should give the common and systematic names of the taxon featured in the article, as well as some information about its classification. Species articles should follow the form:
 * The foofish (Barus foous) is a species of freshwater fish in the baz family (family Bazidae) of order Quuxiformes. It is native to the Big River basin in Ruritania.

Higher order articles should follow the form:
 * Barus is a genus of freshwater fish in the baz family (family Bazidae) of order Quuxiformes. The type species is the common barfish (B. vulgaris), and fishes of this genus are known as the barfishes.

Succeeding paragraphs should give, in order (omitting paragraphs for which no information is available):


 * 1) Range or geographic distribution
 * 2) Physical description, including size, weight, and age data from FishBase
 * 3) Habitat, diet, and related information
 * 4) Importance to humans (aquarium fish, game fish, commercial fishing, research uses, etc.)
 * 5) Conservation status (if not Secure) for species, including explanation for the classification, and mention of members classified as Vulnerable or worse for higher taxa
 * 6) Other noteworthy information (life-cycle, breeding, etc.)
 * 7) Trivia (state fish, national emblem, ships bearing the name, other uses of the name, etc.)
 * 8) Etymology of name (especially for genus names, which FishBase normally provides), alternate common names, important binomial synonyms, etc.

Other sections
Information on keeping fish in an aquarium should be put in a section entitled "In the aquarium". Breeding and dietary information pertaining to captive fish should go here, rather than in the main section, which should refer primarily to the fish in its natural habitat.

Other sections may address topics of interest warranting discussion longer than a brief paragraph.

FishBase
For a FishBase entry on an order, use:



For a FishBase entry on a family, use:



For a FishBase entry on a genus, use:



For most FishBase entries on species, use:



For most FishBase entries on subspecies, use:



For FishBase entries that are problematic for the above templates, get the numeric ID from their URL and use:



For all FishBase templates, year and month refer to the FishBase revision consulted, not the date on which you consulted FishBase; the revision can be found from the FishBase home page.

ITIS
For an ITIS entry, use:



For the ITIS template, year and date refer to the date on which ITIS was consulted. Date can be in either U.S. or international format, as it will be wikified.