User talk:Cwmhiraeth/A draft article

Notes and discussion for a draft of Neotrigonia margaritacea

Some notes
The first few notes were originally placed on the draft page, as this talk page contained notes from a previous project.

From Invertzoo: one thing: for the captions, both images show a whole shell with left and right valve separated. in the taxobox image, the valve on the left is actually the right valve, and vice versa. In the drawing, the one that is higher is the right valve. So in both cases the anterior end of the clam shell would be towards the left of the screen as we view it.

It may perhaps be worth mentioning the unusual hinge arrangement, which is characteristic of the superfamily. There is only one living family consisting of only 5 species, all the rest (and there are many!) are fossils. I also always put "saltwater clam" in the lede sentence and marine for more context, because not everyone knows what a bivalve mollusk means.

I also made the suggestion"Invertzoo suggestion: the shell of this species is thick, and is heavy for its size. The typical adult size of the shell is 40 mm."

Its history is really interesting because it was the first living species that was ever discovered in this entire superfamily, which previously was only known from fossils dating from the Cretaceous period or older! By the way, I put together an article for this genus, borrowing some content from the family article. I would put all these notes on the talk page but you have something else there, maybe from an older article? Invertzoo (talk) 21:17, 25 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I have cleared the talk page and it would seem sensible for you to comment there rather than cluttering up your own talk page. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:41, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Newer notes
I have added a brief section on ecology. I imagine that you think Fossilworks a reliable source, but you will see at the top of the source page that it has made this species extinct! Other potential sources include this and this, but in both cases only the abstract is available to me. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:35, 26 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Those abstracts seem quite useful. As for Fossilworks, I never used it before, so I don't know what I think about it. But any database can make a mistake. User:JoJan and I find a few mistakes everywhere, even on WoRMS, and we write and tell the authors what needs correcting; they are usually grateful that someone thought to notify them about something that they overlooked. Invertzoo (talk) 13:23, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The source said it was "infaunal" and I took that to mean it lived under the surface of the soft substrate. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:57, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
 * This is another example of a term or phrase that can have several shades of meaning, so therefore you have to be careful about how you interpret it. Science papers are full of those kinds of potential "traps" for an unwary editor. This species lives in the sand but apparently does not dig down and position itself below the surface of the sand, because it does not have any siphons. Siphons are tubes of living mantle tissue that reach up to the surface of the substrate and enable a clam to respire. I am assuming these clams might live lying around partly covered in sand, but of course I don't know that, and have no source for it, so I would never put that in an article. When there is any doubt at all, keep it simple and avoid making interpretations. Invertzoo (talk) 14:40, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Another source, but only a preview
Rather old, 1976, but still:

http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1111/j.1502-3931.1975.tb00937.x

The abstract is just barely readable, but contains some good info. Invertzoo (talk) 17:09, 27 April 2014 (UTC)


 * The print quality is so poor that this is really unusable. Page 325 is a little better, but it is difficult to be sure which species is being described, some of the text being about Neotrigonia gemma. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:49, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

I think that the text in the abstract that runs from, "Neotrigonia has such primitive features as" to "is unexpected in light of its shell morphology" is useful, no? As for page 325, on my machine that was harder to read than the abstract, but yes, most of the info on that page is about N. gemma, and only a small amount is about "our" species. Invertzoo (talk) 23:01, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Yet another source
Here is a good one:

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4613-8271-3_30#page-1

Invertzoo (talk) 20:27, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Progress
I think the article is coming along well. I did change the wording of a couple of things to make the meaning more precisely accurate. The existing info now seems OK to me. Now are we now going to add info on the fact that it was the very first species in this entire superfamily to be found living? Previously the entire superfamily was only known from fossils, some very ancient and most of them no more recent than the Cretaceous, although one is known from the early Eocene. The entire group was thought to have died out, so this species (and the other species in the genus) is a "living fossil" or a relict species. Invertzoo (talk) 19:25, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Ready yet or not?
First off, I don't think that the new info you added should go under the heading "Taxonomy". Maybe it should be under something like History? Also, you can't say that When Lamarck described it, it was considered to be a "living fossil" because I don't think that term had been invented in 1804. You can change that prose around to avoid saying that. You may also want to give at least some idea of when the additional species in the same genus were discovered; you can use the WoRMS article as a ref to back that up. Invertzoo (talk) 20:41, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I have rephrased the History section somewhat. As for the additional species in the genus, I could not sum up this information in a brief statement as two were described in the 19th century and the others scattered across the 20th century. I consider this information more relevant to the genus page. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:08, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

8 May
I read it through again. I tweaked the prose in several places. I added a sentence in the intro about the fossil connection because that is important and interesting. I also changed where you said that the family become extinct at the end of the Mesozoic. Actually the genus Eotrigonia existed in the Eocene to Miocene, so you can't say that. (See the first reference in the article about Trigoniidae.)

I would suggest that you ask another editor to examine the article, and then consider it ready. Invertzoo (talk) 17:29, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I know no editor (apart from Cyclopia) to ask to examine the article critically. I would have thought that with your expertise, if you consider it OK then that would be sufficient. It's just that I think we have now extracted all the tuition we are likely to get from this article and should move on. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:40, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I was hoping that Cyclopia would give it at least a quick once-over, as two heads are always better than one, but if that is unlikely to happen, then I suppose you should go ahead and put it up. And I might suggest, as a general point, that you make some notes on the principles that you and I have been discussing. Otherwise I think there is a danger that the change in approach may be forgotten as time goes by. Invertzoo (talk) 23:41, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

What I have learnt

 * That I should read carefully through a main source several times so that I thoroughly understand it and then summarise it in my own words. I then need to go back to the source and make sure that I have not misrepresented anything, made inappropriate deductions, added anything not present in the source or inadvertently used phraseology too close to the source.
 * I have learnt that very little is known about many species, particularly marine ones, and that I should not try to use general information on a higher level taxon in an effort to increase the comprehensiveness of a species level article.
 * I have learnt that I should not try to flesh out the information provided by a source and that I shouldn't describe a starfish as having five slender tapering arms on the grounds of an image, but only if these facts are mentioned in the text. (I am not very happy about this. If the starfish family is described this way and the image confirms it, I would like to use it because papers may tell you all about the secondary metabolites or the larval development when what is wanted for an encyclopedia article are some basic facts.)
 * I have learnt that where a source describes the colour of some organism as "yellow to brown" I should not use the term "yellowish-brown". (In fact in the case of the octopus that mimics its surroundings, I should not ascribe a colour at all.)
 * I have learnt that I shouldn't say "dig itself into the substrate" if the precise mechanism of how the animal buries itself is unknown.
 * I have learnt that the term "infaunal" does not have the precise meaning that I understood it had.
 * I have learnt that where a study examines an animal's behaviour in one part of its range, I must mention that fact in the text because the behaviour may not be present elsewhere.
 * I have learnt how better to describe distribution and range, with the expression "recorded from" being useful if the range seems a bit odd.
 * I have learnt how to include in the text reference to other studies, eg (Hanlon & Rouse, 2009), a thing I had not known before. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:05, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Wow, OK, that's interesting. Actually I meant make notes for your own private use, but that was very nice that you posted them here. Invertzoo (talk) 00:12, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Good to go
Good to go I think. Invertzoo (talk) 21:42, 15 May 2014 (UTC)