Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Bivalves/Archive 2

ARCHIVE PAGE 2: January 2013 to December 2013

New Year 2013, congratulations to all!
This message gives hearty congratulations to all of the Project Bivalves contributors for a successful first year of the project. Despite being a brand new project, and being very understaffed, we achieved a great deal in a year, including: pulling all the existing articles together into the project; fixing the taxonomy and creating a pretty good article on bivalve taxonomy; creating a navigational template for Bivalve anatomy along with many new stubs on bivalve anatomical topics, and... thanks primarily to Cwmhiraeth, we also added a large number of new bivalve articles, and thanks once again to Cwmhiraeth we achieved our second GA and our first FA. Phew! Hope we do as well in 2013! Invertzoo (talk) 18:21, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to User:Hectonichus
We have acquired some nice new articles about bivalves that are on display (and that were photographed there by Hectonichus) at the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano. These are nice additions to the project! Invertzoo (talk) 21:55, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Comments on a new article please?
Hello bivalve people! We have a new article which suddenly appeared from a new contributor who then disappeared. The article is currently tentatively called Shell growth in estuaries. It is pretty good, but a bit essay-like. Despite the current title, the article is not solely about estuaries. Actually the article is currently mainly just about about marine calcareous shell growth and the factors that influence it. The article has a lot about mollusks in it. Will anyone who can spare the time, look at it and please let us know what they think. Does anyone have ideas about what the article should be called, and how they think it should be expanded or maybe teased apart into separate articles? User:Epipelagic has submitted it as a possible DYK. Thanks. Our pre-existing discussions about it are here and also here. Invertzoo (talk) 14:39, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

A Candidate for Featured Picture? Ensis ensis shell
If any project members read this, please would you consider commenting on this nomination. I feel the shell is in too bad a shape for the image to deserve Featured status. Thanks. Invertzoo (talk) 13:00, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Another major reference and some taxonomic notes
http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/handle/1808/8287 has a 2011 higher-level classification of all bivalves, fossil and modern. Whether to follow it or the Bieler et al. version must be a matter of judgement.

Paleobiology Database has not had anyone seriously tackling the Bivalvia and is rather unreliable, both in terms of missing information and inaccurate (outdated) classifications. It doesn't seem to handle homonyms well, either.

I noticed a couple of questions that I can answer:

"Can someone explain to me why we have articles on the order Nuculanoida as well as the order Nuculoida? Is the first one an error, or does it represent an older taxonomic term or a taxonomic term that paleontologists use? We also have a stub article which purports to be on the superfamily "Nuculoidea" although WoRMS has this taxon listed as a genus!"

Nuculanoida was raised to an order by Carter, Campbell, and Campbell (2000) based on the fossil data; molecular data also indicate a very deep split between the nuculid and nuculanid groups. Nuculoidea, like a number of other names, has the inconvenient double identity of being both a genus and a superfamily. At least Nuculoidea is a genus in the Nuculidae and thus in the superfamily Nuculoidea. Trochoidea is a gastropod genus that's about as far from the gastropod superfamily Trochoidea as one can get and still be a snail. Be alert to the problem of homonyms, both within and between taxonomic categories. Wikipedia has a good disambiguation option, something often poorly developed in taxonomic databases.

On a related topic, the taxa previously assigned to Cryptodonta cannot be transferred over to Protobranchia. Although the solemyids are protobranchs, the fossil taxa placed in Cryptodonta are generally extinct groups of Pteriomorpha (look for the families in the Bieler et al. or Carter et al. classifications). 152.44.18.237 (talk) 19:20, 29 May 2013 (UTC)paleomalacologist


 * Thank you for the very helpful note and welcome! We would be delighted to have any other contributions from you. It would be really great to have a paleomalacologist on board. I left a note on your talk page. Invertzoo (talk) 13:05, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

The taxonomy on WoRMS
I wanted to say that we should (I believe) think seriously about using the family and superfamily taxonomy for marine bivalves that is used in the WoRMS database, rather than following Huber's book which I suppose is what we have been doing up until now? The WoRMS database is supported by a group of outstanding world-class taxonomists, and is constantly updated and corrected. It also has the advantage of being machine-searchable. I would welcome opinions from other project members on this question. Invertzoo (talk) 00:22, 10 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I put quite a bit of effort into following the taxonomy as set forth by Bouchet et al., which is used by WoRMS when I did the revised taxonomy of the bivalvia work. Part of the problem with WoRMS though is that it only deals with marine organisms, which leaves fresh water bivalves out of the water so to speak. Shellnut (talk) 23:27, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Ah well, you are right about that Shellnut! Invertzoo (talk) 18:57, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

I just wondered...
Does anyone else read this page and if so, then how come I am almost the only person who posts on here? Notes from additional editors would be very welcome on here, even it is about a routine matter. Invertzoo (talk) 12:51, 12 October 2013 (UTC)