Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (biology)

Note: Some of the discussion below now relates to the extant naming conventions page Naming conventions (fauna).

I'd really like a consensus on how biological articles should be named, to be a part of the Naming conventions page.

Here's my opinion:

First, I don't think the Use English words means that we should always use common names rather than Latinate names, as the Latinate names are the technical names in English (as well as all other languages).

An article should exist under the common (English singular) name of a taxon describing the common usage of the word and linking to the technical description under the formal Latin name. Except maybe in the case of taxa that have only one entry under them, e.g. koala.

Examples:

Example 1:

A full article (including technical characteristics) should probably exist under koala, rather than Phascolarctus cinereus (the Linnaean name), which should have a redirect.

I'm not sure whether a family Phascolarctidae article should exist, since the koala is the only species in the family.

Example 2:

An article should exist under whale explaining the common usage of the word, i.e. a large, fully aquatic, ocean animal of the order Cetacea. Then a statement of how it is sometimes used technically to refer to the whole of order Cetacea, but if the term excludes dolphins it is not a valid biological group since Killer Whales are more closely realted to Pink Dolphins than to Blue Whales. This should include links to all relevant pages (Cetacea, Mysticeti, dolphin, etc.) This page should also list any cultural relevance of the term whale (such as is at the bottom of the mouse article).

Seperate articles should exist under the Latin names of the various taxa: Cetacea, Odontoceti, Mysticeti, Balaenopteridae, etc.

But not Balaenoptera musculus, that article should exist under blue whale.

Example 3:

An article should exist under Therapsida only, as there is no common name, redirects under "Therapsid" and "Therapsids".

Example 4:

The mouse article is a good common usage article (except for the ligature in Muridae). It should then link to family Muridae which should have a technical description.

It might also be a good place to post the capitalization and italicization rules. And possibly on the proper anglicization of family (including sub- and super-) names.

Feedback please, what do other people think?

-Aidan


 * Should English plural English singular or Latin plural be used as taxonomical names ?


 * Example:
 * Therapsid vs. Therapsids vs. Therapsida


 * Any preferences?


 * If we use the English, it should be the singular. For what it's worth, my preference is English over Latin, but that's just me.  --Alan Millar

==== Where there is a decision to use the Latin or Linnaean name for a biological form the following should be observed:
 * 1) The genus name is in the singular.
 * 2) Taxa with a higher rank than genus are in the plural.
 * 3) The species name is either a noun in the genitive case, or an adjective whose gender must agree with that of the genus.
 * 4) The genus name always begins with a capital letter.
 * 5) The species name always begins with a lower case letter.
 * 6) Rules 4 and 5 override the rules of all languages about capitalization of titles (Note that it is impossible for a species name to be the first word in a title.).
 * 7) Genus and species names are always written in italics.
 * Eclecticology, Tuesday, June 11, 2002

The above consensus seems reasonable to me. However, we might also want to create a convention on when to first use Scientific vs. common names. My view is that this should initially be left up to the person first creating the article: if they want to list technical details, physiology, detailed evolution and family trees then the initial article should be given the appropriate scientific name (making the common name a temporary, at least, redirect to the scientific name). If that person writes a lay description of the organism, how it relates to humans and some detail about non-human ecological interactions, then the initial article should be give the most common, common name (with a reasonable minimum amount of ambiguity). Of course most organisms do not have actual common names but many of these do have names that are commonly used by people studying them (these are usually rough Anglicizations of the Scientific names).

As either article grows, there might be a time that the two types of content can and should be divided (BTW, there is also really no reason why an enterprising person couldn?t go through and divide the content earlier rather than later, so long as each article is at least a little more than a proper stub ? I would prefer this not to happen for short articles though).

To recap; I think these articles should be divided as follows for well-known organisms with common names (other less known organisms can have all this information at the Scientific-named article if need be):
 * Scientific names should be used to name articles with information about the organism itself, its detailed evolutionary history, cladistics (or to use a non-loaded word taxonomy), physiology, and other details manly of interest to scientists and some above average intelligence and interest lay persons. All these concepts interrelate with one another and it makes sense to have them together (they are all about the internal environment of the organism -- evolution has shapped that environment).
 * Common names should be used as the titles of articles with lay descriptions of the organisms. These descriptions are almost always concentrated on ecological relationships, esp. the relationship between humans and the organism. Some overview of evolution and physiology should also be placed in the common name article (eventually at least), but this should be limited in length and detail so as not to bore a person of average intelligence and interest. It is also the common name that is most often used by wildlife managers (who concentrate on ecological interactions), so it is particularly important to concentrate on ecological interactions at the common name.

For well known individual species (such as the blue whale/Balaenoptera musculus example above), or genera (such as cat/Felis) we should first always try to write lay descriptions before going into detail, so common names should predominate at this level with the occasional article being broken up between the common and scientific names so that the technical information can be listed separate from lay descriptions. Further division of the content should be taken no a case-by-case basis (for example: should a lengthy, yet interesting and lay-accessible, discussion about bird evolution be placed at evolution of Aves or Bird evolution ? this might be something we need to further discuss). --maveric149

I really think separations like that are a bad idea, and are simply going to cause even more problems about where content should be added. For instance, take the newly discovered order of insects, Mantophasmatodea. These were a new part of the taxonomy, and would have to be added to any technical survey of the Insecta. But at the same time, they were something "laymen" got to read about in the papers, and as such would presumably be added to the insect article, too.

Likewise, both koala and Phascolarctus cinereus will end up discussing their diet. The pack habits of the wolf would be important for Canis lupus as well. The difference between Saurischian and Ornithischian Dinosauria can hardly be ommitted from a discussion on dinosaurs. And so forth.

In short, I think this would lead to a very large amount of duplicated information, and that's always trouble. Common names and scientific names are synonyms. We don't want to have separate articles for, say, Athinai and Athens discussing aspects of the city relevant to Greeks and non-Greeks, we want to have one article for the city discussing boths, and linking off to things that seem overly specific. I would urge you to do the same thing for biological groups.

And, btw, I don't by the idea that people with no biological background need special treatment. Other encyclopedias don't do that, and we already have a leg up on them thanks to hyperlinks. After all, something like Nematoda might be hard to understand as is, but would it be still if all the jargon was linked to other pages?

--Josh Grosse

Believe it or not, but I too am troubled by having this split for similar reasons. However, we also have naming conventions to follow making it necessary to have Human instead of Homo sapiens. And I really don't like the totally non-standard article set-up that was established by the WikiProject Tree of Life which places taxonomic list info before the article (often with long lists of genera or species) and subjugates the actual article text under the heading of "text" as if it were an afterthought. My above proposal was to establish a truce between the taxonomists who only want to use scientific names and people like me who strongly feel that one of the reasons why scientific illiteracy is so rampant is because scientists often insist on using overly complex wording that only they can understand, let alone pronounce or spell (ivory tower stuff). For example, if Joe Blow stumbles onto an article named Balaenoptera musculus there is a good chance he is going to be turned off by the title alone before reading the first line of the article (this would also discourage others from contributing to this article since it is not apparent from Recent Changes that Balaenoptera musculus is the binomial name of Blue whales -- and those that do, will tend to edit the article for a different, more technically inclined audience -- which appears to be the case for many of these articles). Furthermore, who but taxonomists and marine biology experts are going to know the binomial name let alone how the spell it so that they can link to it? I have already discovered several dozen of these articles titled with the scientific name with absolutely no redirect from the common name to the technical name. That's why we use common names for things here in wikiland and also prefer English titles -- those that prefer using technical titles for things just don't bother making redirects and even when they do there still are the other issues I discussed above. I am now of the opinion that the, at most, scientific names should only have the taxonomic info in cases where a common name exists. A link from the common name would be under the heading "Taxonomy of X" in addition to a link from the word itself placed in parenthesis after the bolded common name on the first line. Or we could go all the way and go with my original, uncompromised idea of only using the common names of things when titling articles. Any differences in usage between the common and scientific names would then be discussed within the articles (like what I did with the Jellyfish article). Hum, I just got an idea.... Why not have the "Placement" and "Children/Members" info in a right justified table (like in the Netherlands or radium articles). Then both the article and list can live side-by-side (with the scientific named redirected to the common name -- those who prefer the technical names won't get nearly as confused or discouraged as a mere mortal would if the opposite were the case). I really like this idea. --maveric149

How about that, I agree with you almost everywhere! However, I really do think the truce manages to get the worst of both worlds, to the point where either extreme would be better. We can and should do better than that. The right-aligned tables are a good thought, but I can recall some experimenting with them earlier, and they proved to be more trouble than they're worth.

So here's what I think. A reader might end up going to either ant or Formicidae for information, and in both cases they will be expecting an article rather than a straight taxonomy. That means both should refer to the same page, and sadly, it can't really follow the template header - a person who didn't know a rotifer was alive would be confused well before he began.

This isn't to say we shouldn't have the standardized taxonomy pages, but that they shouldn't be listed under a flat name as if they were regular articles. I think moving them to pages of the form Taxonomy of the Formicidae is a wonderful idea. Their separate existance, however, absolutely must not be justified by robbing the articles of classifications. Rather they should be considered an augmentation to it, where additional information on the taxonomy can be placed - lists of genera too long for articles, lists of synonyms for the group in question, and historical variations on the scheme.

In all cases, classifications should refers to groups by both common and scientific names wherever possible. Books typically list things in a form like Formicidae (ants), which is both informative and accessible to everyone. This goes whatever scheme we choose to adopt.

At that point, all links and searches will work regardless of which name the article happens to be placed at. So it doesn't really matter whether we choose to go with common or scientific, though if anyone wishes to undertake the momentous challenge of drawing up precise guidelines, they are welcome.

I would be more than happy to help with some of the moves such a scheme would require. So, does this sound good to people - maveric, Pierre, Eclecticology, or else concerned?

--Josh Grosse, Jul 12 2002 Sounds good. Except I would go with the more common ant (Formicidae) format so that we are writing for the largest possible audience and adhering to already established naming conventions (of course, many organisms don't have common names, so those articles will be have to have scientific names). If a template and data acquisition guide is made (as is the case for the elements articles) then adding info to it should be a snap. Such a template may only have the bare basics, average weight, size, some taxonomic info etc (similar to the Netherlands table) or it may have more compete data (such as the barium table). The complete taxonomy can be in a sub-article like Taxonomy of Formicidae as you suggest, that would be linked to within the article ant. These are just ideas right now -- it has taken several months for me to work out the bugs in the element article template, I suspect working out the bugs here may take even longer. --maveric149


 * The more I read about this issue, the more I'm convinced about the value of the two article approach. The statement that scientific and common names are synonyms is not accurate.  The common names are indeed synonyms for the corresponding scientific name, but this is only a one way street.  The two sets of names do not have a one-to-one correspondence.  The scientific names are precise, or at least they strive to be; common names are not always understood the same way by everybody.  What do we do with "dolphin" which many of us think of as a small whatle, but which for others will be the dorado of the genus Coryphaena.  I suspect that most of the articles will end up being under the scientific name; most life forms don't even have a common name.  Of course there's a high probability that the cat and Felidae articles will have some duplication, but I don't see that as a problem.  Where there is a serious debate of the sort about where certain information belongs, putting it on both will cover that gray area very nicely.  Joe Blow who has never reard of Rotifers is not likely to be looking them up, and if he does he will probably be disappointed to find that the article makes no mention of Jamaican reggae music.


 * As to the subject headings and layout of the pages, just because I introduced the headings in Solanales that are now at the WikiTree of Life, doesn't mean that I'm going to be inflexible on this. If I was then proposing a structured format for taxonomy pages, I simply had to use some name.  I've looked at the Netherlands and Radium pages, and the illustrations really make those pages attractive.  Mav's idea is great if it can be done without too much technical distress.  About 100 elements and 200 countries is an easier task then 100,000 biological taxa. Eclecticology, Friday, July 12, 2002

I think that the right-aligned table is a very good idea. The children should be in the table unless there are too many of them (say >=100), in which case they should be on a separate page. I suggest formatting the children in a three-wide table if there are more than, say, twelve.

Collisions between scientific names and common names should be handled on a case-by-case basis, until there are enough of one type to make a rule. We've had common names the same as scientific names, common name of one organism same as scientific name of another, and scientific name same as a non-organism name. There are also scientific names of plants which are the same as scientific names of animals. Anura is both a genus of plant and an amphibian taxon; Cecropia is the common and species name of a moth, and the genus name of the embahuba tree.

What do rotifers have to do with Jamaican music?

The species name can be a noun appositive, in which case it may be of a different gender than the genus. For instance, Octopus ovulum and O. selene.

We don't have anywhere near 100,000 taxon articles yet, so converting them all to tables is doable. See pages that link to Animalia and Plantae to see how many articles we have.

--PierreAbbat

To Eclecticology, above. What you say about ambiguity in common names is true, but I don't think it really changes things. Chances are slim that a dolphin article will end up discussing both the mammal and the fish. Instead, people will end up disambiguating the two, giving us articles like dolphin (mammal) and dolphinfish, which do correspond directly to taxonomic groups. Consider for instance the page at zebrafish. I can't imagine a case when this wouldn't happen. And you have to admit, dolphinfish and Coryphaena are about exactly the same thing.

Also, I don't think what you say about our target audience is true. I can imagine someone who has heard of rotifers as something you can see through a microscope and wanted to find out more, and even if he suspects they are alive he need not be ready to start off with a full hierarchial placement and description of the "children". For which, I suppose you could say, we would have separate articles at rotifer and Rotifera - but of the content on the latter page, what honestly isn't appropriate for both? You say some duplication is fine, but I think almost everything will be duplicated in almost every case, and that's simply not.

Btw, in cases where the common and scientific names are identical, you definitely don't want to separate them. Then you have the same information repeated twice under the same name. That's just silly.

I thought some more about the right-aligned table bit, and I think it may be a good idea for placement, but am a bit worried about using it for children. Besides their being many cases where there will be two many children to fit, there are cases where the split is controversial, or simply deserves more explanation than a flat list can give.

--Josh Grosse
 * I suppose I should apologize for the wild free association humour that had a hypothetical searcher confounding rotifers with rastafari. My wife never understands what I'm talking about, but my 12-year old son's groans are a very good sign.
 * I look forward to seeing the tables. Mav seems to have a handle on how to design them, and the rest should be able to fill the blanks in a template.  We seem to have a consensus about handling the placement in such a format.  I think we all have concerns about how the children will look, and it's in the context of the more promiscuous taxa that we may find secondary classification levels to be useful.  On the other it seems to make no sense to constantly remind readers that the bulk of chordates are vertebrates, but at some point the distinction must be made when we are dealing with invertebrate chordates.  I agree that we do need to have room for discussing the children of some taxa notably in the area of cladistics or other alternative taxonomies.  (Maybe different colours?)
 * I think that those of us who have participated in this discussion have reached some consensus on many of the issues. We should perhaps proceed to implement those aspects on which we do agree, and in the short run at least treat the outstanding differences on a case by case basis.  To deal adequately with the cladistics debate, we probably need to have considerably more taxonomy data actually in Wikipedia than is now the case.  In the split page debate we are talking about visions that are not easily communicated to a person who has a different vision, and if we can have articles on 100,000 taxa, those where the split-page issue would be meaningful would be a small percentage of the 100,000.  Unfortunately, most of them relate to the best known taxa.  Eclecticology, Friday, July 12, 2002

Excellent! It looks like the use of the right aligned tables will satisfy everybody here. Now we can work on the details by playing with the table. I agree that we can take on the common/scientific name on a case-by-case basis and only have one article when the common and scientific names are essentially the same thing. I do share Josh?s concern about listing all the children in the table though (this can be done for short children list, but real long ones are problematic).

So I suggest we follow the general format as seen in the isotope section of the radium article for long lists which only lists the most stable and interesting isotopes in the table at the main article at radium. What I plan on doing is to create a complete list of all of radium?s isotopes and their properties in List of radium isotopes (or something similarly named).

For the organism tables we could do something similar: only list those children that are notable in some significant respect (either as being good examples of the placement group the article is about, or for being widely known and written about for other reasons). Then we could have a separate sub-article with all the children listed (maybe in something like List of Magnoliopsida orders ? if it is only going to be a list). I think this would be the most informative thing to do at the main article. --maveric149
 * Been thinking... It still would be OK to at least try and list all the children -- esp. where the contributor doesn't have the knowledge needed to make choices on what to and not to list in the table at the main article (I know I would have trouble deciding this for many lists). We can simply express the goal of only listing the most notable children in the table (which can always be done later by a more informed party). Besides, the great thing about the right aligned table, is that it can be arbitrarily long without interfering with the text of the article. --maveric149
 * Good point. It will be easier to see what's wrong with a list when it's all there. Eclecticology, Saturday, July 13, 2002
 * It certainly shouldn't hurt to try. In the event that something goes wrong, becomes inconvenient or cumbersome, we can always re-evaluate.  Chances are everything done before that point won't have to be changed anyways. --JG

Hi all. I'm new here. I just added a comment regarding scaling to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life that may be of interest to readers here. Cheers Gary Curtis 11:20 25 Feb 2003 UTC