Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Alt

Backup of original version of page.

First, an important note for everyone to remember:

A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in these articles. These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles! -

Title
WikiProject Tree of Life

Scope
This WikiProject aims primarily to present the taxonomy of all living species (and maybe some extinct ones as well) in a tree structure. This is a particularly ambitious WikiProject, as there are millions of them.

Parentage
The parent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Biology. The grandparent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Science.

Descendant Wikiprojects

 * WikiProject Birds
 * WikiProject Dog breeds
 * WikiProject Cetaceans

Similar Wikiprojects
The similar WikiProject is the WikiProject Conservation worldwide.

Participants

 * Eclecticology
 * --KQ (intermittently, when something has been dumbed down enough to be legible to the unwashed masses)
 * Magnus Manske
 * maveric149
 * Pierre Abbat
 * Ram-Man
 * Dan Koehl
 * Stephen Gilbert (interested in working on dinosaurs; I'm also one of the unwashed masses.)
 * Trevor Dykes (I'll try. My main interest is Mesozoic mammals and the like.  I do wash, but I'm strictly an amateur.)
 * LDan
 * WormRunner (earthworms, some other invertebrates and some plants)
 * Hadal Currently focusing on fish but will write about anything with a heartbeat.
 * User:seglea I have some specialist knowledge on birds, rodents and primates (which need a lot of work), but I have ready access to the technical literature and am willing to turn an amateur hand to most taxa.
 * UtherSRG General cleanup.

See talk:Solanales for the original expression of this idea.

Structure
There is an article called Tree of life, but since that is a disambiguation page, the real root of the Tree of Life is evolutionary tree. There shall be articles for all taxa of ranks domain, kingdom, phylum or division, class, order, family, and genus. There may be articles for intermediate taxa. Articles for species are generally not needed, but may be put for salient species such as Amorphophallus titanum.

Each taxon of a rank from genus to phylum/division, inclusive, shall have the following sections:
 * The following struck-out text (except for problems and references) no longer applies due to discussion on Talk:Hominid. Now a table will contain taxonomic information.


 * Placement: This is a list of the taxa of which this is a subtaxon.
 * Synonyms and common names: If this taxon is also known by another name, such as Gramineae for Poaceae, that is noted here. Also the common name, if any (grasses, in this case).
 * References: This is a list of references used in compiling the article, primarily those used for the children. If the reference is hardcopy, the date of publication shall be listed; if online, the date it was checked.
 * Text: Description of the taxon including distinguishing characters, how members of the taxon are used, ecology, etc. If the scientific name is also the common name of the same organism, the entire common-name article goes here. Anything about the taxon not covered by the other sections is fair game, including pictures (see Testudines).
 * Children: These are subtaxa of the taxon. If the children are anything genus or above, they are links.
 * Problems: I'm not quite sure what this is for.

These, except the text, may be placed in a table (see example below), right-justified at the top of the text. In this case, a picture, if any, is placed below the common name and above the placement. If the page is about a species, the "Children" section is replaced with a Binomial name section (see Bald eagle for an example).

If a taxon has a single child, they may be on the same page with a redirect from the other. For instance, since Ginkgo is the only genus in Ginkgophyta, Ginkgophyta, Ginkgoales, and Ginkgoaceae all redirect to Ginkgo. Similarly Cuscuta is the only genus in Cuscutaceae (and the common name dodder redirects there too).

If a taxon is also the common name for the same organism, the text should go above the placement, as in Hippopotamus. If the common name covers more than the taxon, as in octopus, that shall be noted.

If a taxon is a homonym of a word that is not the name of an organism, it or the non-organism shall be distinguished. For instance, Rubiaceae has links to the genera Alberta (plant) and Augusta (plant) to avoid confusion with the places Alberta and Augusta.

If a taxon is a homonym of the common name of a different organism, they may be placed on the same page with a horizontal rule between them. See nasturtium for an example.

Criteria for inclusion
At what level is it worth having a separate Wikipedia entry for a particular species? Any level you like. If we try to do individual entries for all species, we will be at it for a long time! The simplest (and probably best) rule is to have no rule: if you have the time and energy to write up some particularly obscure subspecies that most people have never even heard of, go to it!

As a general guideline, though, it's best to combine separate species into a single entry whenever it seems likely that there won't be enough text to make more than a short, unsatisfying stub otherwise. If the entry grows large enough to deserve splitting, that can always be done later.

A useful heuristic is to create articles in a "downwards" order, that is, family articles first, then genus, then species. If you find that information is getting thin, or the family/genus is really small, just leave the species info inline in the family or genus article, don't try to force it down any further. (An exception to this is monotypic families or genera; create a species article then redirect family and genus names to it.)

What about extinct species? At the very least, we should include species that have become extinct within historical times&mdash;i.e., within the last 5000 years or so. There seems no obvious reason to exclude any species.

It is important to link articles up and down at least, so that, say, a family article, like shrike, links back to order passerine, and down to species accounts if they exist.

Names and titles:
In general, use the formal common name for page titles.


 * Peregrine Falcon not Falco peregrinus

Sometimes exceptions need to be made; some individual creatures (usually newly discovered ones) do not yet have a formal common name. Some distinct groups are known only by their scientific name. Dicruridae, for example, is a much better title than monarch flycatchers, flycatchers, fantails, drongos and the Magpie-lark. Also note that ONLY ornithologists have taken to officially formalizing common names. Therefore it is not just newly discovered species that "do not yet have a formal common name", but all species that are not birds. Common names differ by language and geographic location and are therefore not always appropriate for article titles.

The name of a bird species is always capitalised. This signals to the reader that we are indicating a particular, exact species. The phrase "in Australia there are many Common Starlings" indicates a large number of Sturnus vulgaris. In contrast, the phrase "in Australia there are many common starlings" indicates several different types of starling.

When you create a new entry for a species, make sure it is correctly capitalised for the relevant group and always create a redirect in the alternative form.

Summary of naming guidelines common names:


 * The name of a particular bird species is always capitalised: Common Blackbird, Western Marsh Harrier. Cetaceans are also capitalised.
 * The name of a group of species is not capitalised: thrush family, kingfishers, turtle doves, marsh harriers.
 * The hyphenated part of a species name is not usually capitalised: Red-winged Blackbird, Black-faced Butcherbird, Splendid Fairy-wren.
 * Alternative names should be mentioned where appropriate; with bold type in the opening line of the entry if they are in wide use, elsewhere in the article (with or without the bold type) if they are less-used. This is usually a matter for individual judgement.

Summary of naming guidelines: scientific names:


 * Orders, families and other taxa above genus level are written with an initial capital and in roman (not italic) text. The taxon descriptor is also always capitalized when it precedes the taxon name, but not when it stands alone: "bats belong to a class of their own &mdash; the Class Chiroptera"; "the genera of rats and mice are included in the Family Muridae and the Order Rodentia.
 * The names of genera are always italicised and capitalised: Turdus, Falco, Anas.
 * Species names are never capitalised, even when derived from a proper noun. They are always italicised, and always preceded by either the genus name or an abbreviation of it: Alcedo pusilla or A. pusilla, Cisticola juncidis or C. juncidis. Thus juncides by itself would have no meaning (there could be several species of very different organisms with that name.

Taxonomy and references
This is likely to be the single most difficult part of the project. Not only does taxonomy vary significantly from one authority to another, but it is in a state of constant change. There is no single authority to rely on; no one list can claim to be the list.

Hierarchy Definition
No classification of the Tree of Life has been defined. See this example on dividing a topic into a hierarchy.

General Strategy and Discussion forum

 * /General
 * /Strategy

Potentially Useful References

 * www.itis.usda.gov (often incomplete, occasional misspellings, birds are idiosyncratic)
 * NCBI database
 * L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz (1992 onwards). The families of flowering plants: descriptions, illustrations, identification, information retrieval. http://delta-intkey.com (Comprehensive genus lists)
 * The Tree Of Life Web Project
 * Mikko's Phylogeny Archive
 * Vertebrata - Japanese language, but the structure's fine and the names are in Sciencese!)
 * Biosis Index to Organism Names
 * uBio classification - classifications fairly deep and up to date, generally following standard form though not always among basal groups
 * Systema naturae - Does not always give single breakdowns for groups, which is sometimes confusing but can be very useful
 * FishBase - Huge database giving basic info on thousands of fish.
 * Animal Diversity Web from the University of Michigan - Very informative

Template
What colors to make the HTML table backgrounds

Note that darkgray is spelt with an a, while lightgrey is spelt with an e, thanks to a quirk in the HTML standard. Changing these will work on some browsers, but not all.

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Sample taxoboxes (plants)
Divisions Nonvascular plants Bryophyta - mosses . . Vascular plants Seedless Psilophyta - whisk ferns . . Seeded Gymnosperms Coniferophyta - conifers . . Angiosperms Magnoliophyta - flowering plants . . Ref. source-abbrev page-name yyyy-mm-dd

Level: Plantae
(example from Plant)

Page contents:

Synonyms and common names
Where found.

Text
Whatever you want to say.

Children
(actually, this is pretty much covered in the taxobox; if you decide to include it, add comments to the entries.)

Problems
Here we can note deviations from what the writer has accepted as a standard. In Solanales I show two families that my source did not show as belonging here. One it placed in another order; the other was not even in its data base. (from Talk:Solanales)

Level: Division
Classes Liliopsida (monocots) Magnoliopsida (dicots) . . Ref. source-abbrev page-name yyyy-mm-dd

(example from Flowering_plant)

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Level: Class
Orders Subclass Asteridae &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Asterales (sunflowers) - 1 family &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Callitrichales - 2 families . . Subclass Caryophyllidae &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Caryophyllales - 12 families . . Ref. source-abbrev page-name yyyy-mm-dd

(example from Magnoliopsida)

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Level: Order
Families Acanthaceae . . Ref. Uni-Ham 52efam 2002-09-06

(example from Scrophulariales)

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Level: Family
Genera Agalinis Raf. -- false foxglove . . and about 200 more. Ref. source-abbrev page-name yyyy-mm-dd

(example from Scrophulariaceae)

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Level: Genus
Species Tradescantia bracteata Small ex Britt. . . Ref. source-abbrev page-name yyyy-mm-dd

(example from Spiderwort)

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Level: Species
Binomial name Fraxinus americana L.  * Some botanists include the Oleaceae in the order Lamiales.

(example from White_ash)

This box also shows a comment on the botany; on this level the info should not be included in the text, but the taxobox needs it.

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