Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fungi/Lichen task force/Archive 2

Newsletter delivery
Hi all: I've added a newsletter tab to the project headers. If you'd rather not have the newsletter cluttering up your talk page, you can now elect to get just a link, or to receive no notification at all. Click the tab to make your choice. (I've defaulted everyone to "link only".) Thanks, MeegsC (talk) 23:19, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Italic 7.0
The ITALIC system (Information System on Italian Lichens) has LOADS of CC pix of lichens. If you're looking for Wiki-compliant photos to illustrate a species, it's worth a look there! MeegsC (talk) 23:28, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

January newsletter
... for those who don't get automatic delivery.

MeegsC (talk) 23:30, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Boeremia exigua
Boeremia exigua is in Category:Lichen species. Is it actually a lichen? Plantdrew (talk) 02:28, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * , I can find nothing reference-wise that suggests so. It appears to be a blight fungus. I've removed it from the lichen species category. MeegsC (talk) 09:09, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

February lichen task force newsletter
MeegsC (talk) 20:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

May newsletter
MeegsC (talk) 08:59, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Outline of lichens
I've nominated the outline of lichens for featured list status. Any additions / corrections / suggestions for improvements appreciated! MeegsC (talk) 14:40, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Not any uptake, unfortunately. I think the double whammy of esoteric material (well, to most people not in this task force!) and there being no clearly defined standards of how "outlines" should be done are keeping the regulars from commenting. I'll note here that the "Genera" listing in the outline is definitely incomplete; I'm sure there's been at least 100+ new genera proposed since Lücking, Hodkinson and Leavitt's 2016 summary was published (and it will be quite a task to ensure this section is up to date!). Esculenta (talk) 17:31, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Teloschistaceae
I've just made a large update to the article for this family, and have submitted it to GAN; because it's long and complex, I suspect it will be sitting there for quite a while. As you can see from the article (check out the Notes section, in particular), this was challenging to put together because there's quite a bit of disagreement about which of the many newly circumscribed genera to accept. I may make it a side project for the next few months to bluelink all of the redlinks now in the article ... there are 67 redlinks for unwritten genus articles alone! Esculenta (talk) 18:02, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I see this one is already reviewed and a GA. Congrats! It's a nicely written piece. MeegsC (talk) 17:17, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Not close to finished yet
I recently put up the outer space visitor, Buellia frigida for GAN. I found it interesting that not only did this obviously highly notable and astrobiologically relevant species not have an article, it didn't have an article on any of the other language Wikipedias either. So many articles still to write ... Esculenta (talk) 03:40, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Project tool
I'm working on a Python program that I hope will be a help to this (and later other) Wikiprojects. Basically, it searches all the article in a category for the presence or absence of categories or text. Sort of like the functionality of Petscan, but with features specifically useful for WikiProject article maintenance. I used it recently to find all of the lichen taxon articles without "Category:Lichens described in" or "Category:Taxa described in", and have added these cats to nearly all articles. If you can think of other useful maintenance-related things to check for, please suggest!

I added a functionality to check and report back all articles that have 0 or 1 reference (which, of course, is not ideal). I've added the results of this search, applied to the Category:Lichen genera, to a to-do page here. Full disclosure: most of these single-citation pages are my fault! Next step is to make a subroutine that adds a Catalogue of Life citation to these 0 or 1 references pages (after checking to make sure classification in the article and Col agree). After this is completed, I'll go through other categories until every lichen-related article has at least 2 citations. Esculenta (talk) 17:25, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Article template
I've added a new tab to the project pages – article template, which contains suggestions for what to include in articles about lichen species and genera. Please add, subtract, modify, fold, spindle and mutilate as necessary! MeegsC (talk) 09:32, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

How about the algae?
There are about 150+ species of algae in 50+ genera that are known photobionts. I suggest that in general, we also care about these taxa (some day, in theory, they will all get linked to in this task force's lichen articles) and we should add our project to these talk pages. Any disagreement? FWIW, I made an alga article (Trebouxia decolorans) and plan to make more to eliminate some redlinks. Esculenta (talk) 20:36, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Definitely! They're as much a part of the lichens as the fungi are. MeegsC (talk) 21:27, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Predators
Do we want to include species that feed on lichens in our remit? Things like Luffia lapidella, a moth which (as a caterpillar) feeds extensively on lichens, or various species of slugs, which are major predators? Or are they beyond our scope? MeegsC (talk) 21:25, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Hmm, if we start expanding scope to include more creatures that include lichens in their lifecycle, I think we'd be exposing the task force to a potential biodiversity overload. Although water bears are neat. Shall we revisit when we've got all the other lichen taxa and topics done first? Esculenta (talk) 00:35, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with Esculenta that predators of lichens would be beyond the scope of this task force, particularly when there is still a lot of work to be done on just lichens, period. I'm not sure if this holds water with other projects, i.e. does WP Birds include snakes that are predators of birds or eat bird eggs? That would be an enormous increase in articles that fall under our purview. What might be a middle group is having a category ('Taxon that predate on lichens' or something to that effect) and try to ensure that each article tagged as such has a sub-section, if not more, on lichens with adequate sourcing. Kazamzam (talk) 15:56, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of any predators that are tagged for a project based on what they prey on. There are some parasites tagged for what they parasitize (WikiProject Rodents probably has more parasites tagged than any other project), and there are some diseases and pathogens tagged for what they infect (WikiProject Plants probably has more diseases tagged than any other project; many of the plant diseases are also tagged with WikiProject Agriculture). There are at least a few parasites or diseases tagged for WikiProjects Birds, Bivalves, Fishes and Mammals (there could be some other WikiProjects with parasites and diseases, but these are the ones I'm aware of).
 * I suspect efforts to tag parasites and pathogens will mostly come down to a single editor having done so without any prior discussion/consensus to include parasites and pathogens in the scope of a WikiProject (or possibly multiple editors working on NPP who mass apply any WikiProject banners that they think might be relevant). Plantdrew (talk) 16:55, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, there might be a good argument for including mycoviruses isolated from (or known only from) lichens, like Lepraria chrysovirus 1 (LiCV1) from Lepraria incana. But there aren't many of these known. Esculenta (talk) 17:47, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Collaborations
After a conversation with, I have added a Collaboration tab to our header, and have started a nomination page there with a few nominations as examples. Feel free to add your two cents, pence, rupees, pesos, bolivars or whatever other currency might be appropriate! MeegsC (talk) 16:29, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Total articles?
What's the theoretical total number of articles this task force will cover? Extrapolating from the 2016 and 2018 taxon numbers presented in the Main page, here's a back-of-the envelope estimate:


 * Species: 22000
 * Genera: 1050
 * Families: 120
 * Orders: 40
 * Lichenicolous fungi + lichenicolous lichens 2700
 * Photobiont algae & cyanobacteria 160
 * Lichen products 200 (there's about 1000 known but most might have trouble meeting notability standards)
 * Lichenologists 300
 * Redlinks on to-do page 25
 * Misc.: lichen morphology terms, taxon list articles, journals, organizations, other things I'm forgetting: 200 (?)

So that's about 27000. I should add that I'm making the assumption that every species deserves an article, but that may not be a universally held notion. I suppose in some future scenario there could be 1000's of articles titled "List of lichens of foo location", but at least this gives an upper limit to the numerical purview of the task force. Comments? BTW, I like the recent additions of the project page count and the article assessment progression bar! Esculenta (talk) 03:53, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That seems about right – unless Lücking et al are correct and the total number of species is closer to 28,000! ;) Let's see... If the six members of the task force wrote one article per day every day, it would only take ten years to have at least a stub for every article. (LOL) In reality, given we've only added a few hundred articles in the past year, at the current rate it will take well over a century! BTW, if you haven't noticed yet, you can hover over the article assessment progression bar to see percentages for each colour category. I'm always snooping around other projects, checking what "cool stuff" they use. MeegsC (talk) 08:37, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, I had forgotten about the 28,000 species estimate ... so maybe roughly 35,000 is a better estimate of the "upper bound". Due to recent tech advances, the time it takes for me to write a start-class lichen species article has been reduced from about an hour to a quarter of that, and I suspect that time will go down quite a bit with further advances expected this year. I'm working on my next batch of articles that should be ready in a couple of weeks, which will add about 1/100th of the known species to our numbers. Esculenta (talk) 13:52, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Lichen photobiont?
Would it make sense to add a category called "lichen photobiont" (or something similar) to tag those algae/cyanobacteria that are known to be associated with lichens? Right now, we have no quick way of identifying them. MeegsC (talk) 08:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes please! Esculenta (talk) 13:52, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Done! MeegsC (talk) 14:17, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Lichens and air pollution
For those who are interested (either in participating or just following along with its development), the first task force collaboration article has been started at Draft:Lichens and air pollution. MeegsC (talk) 22:43, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Reflib template
I wonder if it might be useful to start a reference library for the project using Template:Reflib. It could save a lot of time with regularly used resources! MeegsC (talk) 17:01, 14 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Perhaps I'm not fully understanding the idea, but I have my often-used sources in a text file that I can quickly copy-paste to any article I'm working on; not sure how Reflib would make things faster? On a related note, I was thinking of a "References" tab (or maybe just part of the "Resources" tab) where one could list their lichen sources (inspired by Mike Christie's reference library), as another potential info source for task force members. Esculenta (talk) 17:48, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Ooooo... I think I like that even better! I think the "faster" has to do with you just have to type and it puts the full ref in for you. And potentially having a ref library lets people know what other sources are out there. But your suggestion gives even better clarity, I think. Let's do it! MeegsC (talk) 18:33, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Here's an example of the reflib template, by the way: Template:Reflib/Anglo-Saxon history. (Page down to see the list.) MeegsC (talk) 19:01, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Lichen article
I think the lichen article needs to be reorganised a bit so that WHAT a lichen is comes before what it looks like. Right now, we don't (in the main part of the article, anyway) talk about what makes up a lichen – i.e. the fungal and photobiont partners – until after we've talked about what it looks like on the outside. I think we need to flip that. MeegsC (talk) 19:47, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Gah, that article needs so much work ... I wonder if it would be easier to start a fresh version in sandbox rather than fixing the current mess bit-by-bit. Anyway, I applaud any efforts to reorganize it :) Esculenta (talk) 20:25, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it is pretty poor! A fresh version in Draft space (where we could all add our two penneth) might indeed be the way to go. Shall we??? MeegsC (talk) 22:58, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Sure! We'll make it a 2024 project. I won't have much extra time for it until the new year (now prioritizing my behind-the-scenes species creation bonanza), but we can start out slow, with a detailed outline before we commit to any writing. Esculenta (talk) 23:29, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a great idea. I too will be busy for the first part of the new year, but will contribute where I can. I'll set up a draft and we can start with an outline. MeegsC (talk) 23:40, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay. It's live at Draft:Lichen. I'd suggest we do any outlining on the talk page. MeegsC (talk) 23:47, 14 December 2023 (UTC)