Wikipedia:WikiProject Gastropods/Taxonomy

Taxoboxes in general
All gastropod articles which are about an individual taxon should have a taxobox. This is something that has been inherited from the Tree of Life WikiProject, of which WikiProject Gastropods is a subproject. The taxobox should always be positioned at the top right-hand side of the page.

Our taxoboxes are put together manually. The project had a consensus (September 2011 on the Project Talk Page) not to adopt automatic taxoboxes at the present time. We will reconsider using them when they are much easier to use and have clear and simple instructions.

A manually created taxobox for the marine gastropod species Nerita plicata is shown on the right.

The following text is adapted from the WikiProject_Tree_of_Life. Please also see Taxobox usage

There are three main parts in a taxobox, in terms of how it appears on the page:


 * A header which shows the name of the group, followed (when possible) by a representative image.


 * A table which shows the placement of the group in the most up-to-date system of taxonomy, which in the case of gastropods is currently that of Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005 and changes in the taxonomy of gastropods since 2005.


 * A footer, whose content varies: it shows the binomial name and sometimes synonyms in the case of a species, and in the case of higher taxa, it instead shows a list of subgroups.

Some items that can also be included in the taxobox, but are not (necessarily) standardized, include:
 * Range map - Found here - (see, for example, Orca)
 * Fossil record: presence over time
 * Synonyms

See also :
 * How to use tables

How to include clades in gastropod taxoboxes
Note 1: The Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005 taxonomy uses Linnaean taxa for the categories Class and above, and uses Linnaean taxa for superfamily and below, but contains only unranked clades and informal groups for the intermediate levels.

Note 2: The names of the unranked clades do not fit into the template simply, like the Linnaean taxa do, thus, after a fair bit of thought and experimentation, we are now using a system where we insert the clades and informal groups one under the other in the taxobox. In code it is done like this:


 * | classis = Gastropoda


 * | unranked_superfamilia =

clade Nameofclade

informal group Nameofinformalgroup

clade Otherclade

clade Anotherclade


 * | superfamilia = Proceedasnormal

Please use this system in any new article. If you have difficulty doing this, please ask for help on the Project talk page, we will be glad to assist you. Also, if you come across out-of-date taxonomy within a taxobox in any gastropod article, please remove the out-of-date parts and replace them with content which is arranged in this manner, and which is based on Bouchet & Rocroi's work. If you come across a taxobox that shows no taxa at all between the level of class and superfamily, please insert the appropriate new taxonomy in the approved arrangement. Thank you very much for your help with this.

Note about italics in titles
The field name = is omitted in this example. Without that field, the code will automatically format the taxobox title and also the title of the article from the appropriate field lower down that lists the taxon name. In other words, when you omit the name field, the name of the article will automatically be shown in italics (assuming it is a genus or species name, and also assuming that it is correctly entered in italics in the appropriate field lower down.

However: Some editors strongly feel that leaving the name field in place and adding above the taxobox code is a preferable way to implement an italic title. There are discussion in progress about the possible use of a bot to change all genus and species titles over to italics automatically.

This matter has not been settled yet; as of June 21st 2009 there was no consensus on this question.



 is a species of sea slug, a dorid nudibranch, a shell-less marine gastropod mollusk in the family xxxxxxxxx.

Copy & paste first sentence of an article for a land pulmonate species


 is a species of air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusk in the family xxxxxx.

Copy & paste blank taxobox, first sentence and headings for a genus article


 is a genus of small, air-breathing, land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs in the family FAMILIA.

Species
Species in the genus  include:
 * SPECIES