Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Bathyacmaea secunda

Anatomy of Bathyacmaea secunda
Voting period ends on 5 Oct 2013  at 06:19:31 (UTC)
 * Reason:SVG image is of more than adequate quality and complexity, is freely licensed, is the only such image Wikipedia is ever likely to have of this obscure deep-sea limpet
 * Articles in which this image appears:Bathyacmaea secunda
 * FP category for this image:Animals/Others
 * Creator:KDS444 (nominator's Wikimedia Commons username)


 * Support as nominator -- KDS 4444   Talk  06:19, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Support Raykyogrou0  ( Talk ) 19:53, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment Looks very good, but I think it needs some orientation for this strange creature. Since there are "left" organs, it should theoretically have a front and back? Mattximus (talk) 21:44, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed, and I will take a shot at making this clearer. Would you settle for a "head" to help orientate you?  The animal has no tail, per se, and it's digestive system ends at its neck but it certainly does have a front and a back and is shown in three-quarter view here.  I will create a new bracket that should clear things up.   KDS 4444   Talk  18:10, 26 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Support: this splendid image looks like the best we're ever going to get about this species. It is based on the figures from the original article in the "Journal of Molluscan Studies". JoJan (talk) 15:34, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment I applaud the creator for being bold enough to attempt this extremely challenging task, but I do have a few serious comments: First off I am not sure it is a good idea for someone who is not directly familiar with the anatomy of this species (or the anatomy of true limpets in general) to attempt a daring 3-D reconstruction like this from scratch, based only on straightforward "overhead" 2D drawings in the original paper; this illustration is almost guaranteed to be at least somewhat misleading, despite the many hours than have gone into the careful creation of this figure. Also, this 3-D reconstruction is purely diagrammatic, unlike the illustrations in the original paper, which were completely naturalistic. And as a result, this diagram looks considerably more weird and other-worldly than it should look if it was an accurate portrait of the anatomy of the species. If we decide to accept it as being an OK reconstruction, which to my mind is a big jump in the dark, then yes, of course the head or rather the snout should be labelled. I also think one of the tentacles should be labeled, and the label could perhaps say "without eyes", as that is a distinctive feature of the species. But I have many questions: why is the cerebral commissure shown as narrowing so much in the middle, when that is not the case in the illustrations in the original paper? And should the position of the shell in life be indicated? What is labelled "foot muscles" are I believe the shell muscles, a completely different thing, and why do they have rounded ends like bullets (I am pretty sure that is incorrect)? Why is there a grey mark extending out from the back of the animal near the lower edge? It must be at least be stated in the description that is is a diagrammatic view of the creature's anatomy as shown from a viewpoint that is neither lateral nor anterior but intermediate between the two, otherwise people will have no idea what they are looking at. The diagram is partly see-through or cut-away, and partly not. To me it is very confusing in terms of trying to understand the anatomy. Where is the foot? What is the grey blobby stuff at the bottom where the foot should be? To be honest I would have preferred it if the editor had simply redrawn the original illustrations from the paper. Sorry to be rather negative, but I feel I should be honest in expressing how I feel about this, despite it being a very brave attempt to make a synthesis from the available information. Invertzoo (talk) 19:47, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Response I understand accept the above criticism .  Perhaps the image requires more of a preface: like many illustrators of anatomy attempting to show distinctions between organs and systems, I have used color here as a visual aid just as much as I have used lines, gradients, and textures.  I did this both to decrease ambiguity with regard to where one part/ organ leaves off and another begins as well as to capture the eye of the viewer without deceiving with regard to placement or nomenclature.  The featured picture of the internal anatomy of a spider, for example, applies this same color technique, and to great effect, though it makes no real attempt at a 3D rendering.  What I have tried to do here is combine the technical known facts about the creature's anatomy as given in an academic journal and recreate its appearance in 3D using color as an illustrative tool, though I will admit that descriptions such as "grey blobby stuff" are hard not to take rather personally. Criticisms with regard to the style of the cerebral commissure I can take as a request to limit my artistic license there, and can be fairly easily changed; those with regard to the colors or shading used or the "blobs" I have drawn are not as helpful to me.  The animal is a soft-bodied mollusc with almost no actual color inside it, and a "faithful" rendering in that respect would have been both bland and unintelligible.  Here, using color, I have placed the heart exactly where the heart should be; I have drawn the torsion of the visceral ganglion with the correct direction of twist in the commissure which is located correctly on the animal's right side just above and behind the pleural ganglia; I have faithfully shown where the intestine enters and leaves the pericardium, and have shown the correct placement and arrangement of the nephridial openings and the anus to the right side of and above the head;  the lateral wall of of the foot is continuous with the shell muscles (which it appears I must relabel), so I have not drawn a separate foot; I have not tried to indicate things such as variations in the epithelium as this level of detail would be beyond the scope of a gross anatomical illustration. The image is already very complicated— if I had attempted to include a translucent outline of the pedal sole, for example, this might have added very little in terms of interesting or unique information but would have required yet another arrow and explanation— however, if others feel the image must be considered incomplete without it, they need only have said so.  And if there are elements that seem superfluous and could be removed, I would welcome those thoughts as well.  I have been pondering these options myself for more than three months now, and after more than a hundred hours of development and adjustment in Adobe Illustrator I eventually came to the conclusion  that this version had a tolerable balance of what was most important, most necessary, and most interesting.  And most correct, as best I could interpolate it, taking artistic license only where doing so added to the image's visual appeal without making it insincere.  Having said all that, if it is confusing then it is confusing and I would rather withdraw my nomination of it for candidacy rather than have a completed work of mine be considered unuseful.  I welcome additional input on that front from other editors— I have stared at it so long that I am certain I can no longer see it with fresh eyes.   KDS 4444   Talk  13:43, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Follow-up comment I apologize sincerely that I hurt your feelings KDS444; I understand that you worked extremely hard on this image for a very long time, and I certainly have no problem at all with the false color. I do believe that the image is quite useful, but I am concerned it is potentially a bit misleading in a few ways, and therefore I personally feel it should not get Featured status. I am also a little bit concerned that making a 3-D construction from the original 2-D drawings in the paper may perhaps represent too much of a "synthesis". Others can of course feel free to disagree with me, and I am not certain I am right on all the points I have raised. Thanks for all your hard work. Invertzoo (talk) 20:59, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Have you considered writing the original authors, asking them to review it? With their approval, this would pass easily. Adam Cuerden (talk) 05:00, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree completely with this suggestion. That would be really terrific. In my experience most malacologists are willing to do something like that. The primary author of the original 2006 paper is Takenori Sasaki, and his email is sasaki{at}um.u-tokyo.ac.jp . If KDS4444 (or anyone else) would like some help with contacting Sasaki, I am more than willing to assist. I have nearly 40 publications myself (I am a semi-professional malacologist and therefore part of the field) but it is not necessary to be in the field in order to contact an author like this.  Invertzoo (talk) 13:29, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

--Armbrust The Homunculus 06:29, 5 October 2013 (UTC)