Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spiders/Archive 001

Stub needing help
I added a stub for stabilimentum. Please help flesh it. Shyamal 12:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I discovered the article Web decorations and have redirected to that. Shyamal 12:08, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I was just about to tell you :) I found it yesterday when re-ordering the Argiope article. --Sarefo 12:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Bite ranks section on hobo spider article
The section on "bite ranks" (which appears to be added by an anonymous editor) is thoroughly lacking in encyclopedic tone; full of typographical errors, is either unsourced or original research, and doesn't correspond well at all to modern science on spider bites in general, the hobo in particular.

I think it ought to be axed; but wanted to ask you all first. If this "bite scale" is modern scientific thought, a recent reference to it would be nice. :)

Speaking of which--I'm sorely tempted to create a new section in the (urp) Poisonous spiders article, "spiders whose danger to humans is disputed", to put such critters as the hobo, the yellow sac spider, the white-tailed spider, and a couple of other species which recent research has indicated may have undeserved reputations (but which many medical and wildlife authorities still consider dangerous). The common theme to all of these is that many necrotic injuries/illnesses are chalked up to spider bites by medical personnel, based on flimsy evidence, but when cases are limited to those where the spider is positively identified by an expert, the nasty symptoms go away or are greatly reduced in scope. I'm not taking a side in the controversy; but given that many experts have chimed in on the subject, Wikipedia should track the issue.

--EngineerScotty 05:35, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Didn't we want to move Poisonous spiders to Spider bites? Is there some reason we didn't do it yet? OTOH, it may prove later that Spider bites would itself become to unwieldy... ah, you two (scotty +P0M) do the venom thing, i have no idea about this stuff :) I have never been bitten by a spider, and don't know anybody who has. --Sarefo 05:48, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Araneae -> Spider

 * It's mentioned in the project page that Araneae may get moved to Category:Spiders. How about other uses of "Araneae" in article titles, such as Araneae families?  WP's longstanding practice is to prefer common names over scientific names.  Reasons to use scientific names include the case where a given critter has no common name, or if the common name is ambiguous or poorly defined; however, "spider" is not ambiguous (and refers precisely to those arthropods in order Araneae).  Who's for moving Araneae taxonomy to Spider taxonomy, etc, leaving the Araneae links as redirects? --EngineerScotty 18:00, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I already wanted to do this, but it was lower priority. yes, i do think that Araneae is a real pain to write correctly. I just edited Achaearanea, i know what I'm talking about ;). So, because Spider is a unambiguous term for this order, I'd say let's move them pages :) (I already made a link from Spider families to Araneae families earlier today). One more thing: Araneae taxonomy is a total construction site. --Sarefo 05:43, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Species lists: split by subfamily
(following content from User:Sarefo moved from my talk page --EngineerScotty 04:39, 27 July 2006 (UTC))

hi again,

i just noticed that you put a lot of work into transforming the List of Theraphosidae species. Here's the thing: these 111 lists are created "automatically" from Platnick's WSC. so they were never ment to be edited, in order to be able to easily update them whenever Platnick publishes a new version (twice a year i've been told). That said, maybe it *is* a good idea to annotate and sort these lists according to subfamilies. but we should brainstorm about the best way to do this, or the whole species list backbone could end in chaos. Here are three off the hat (do you say so in english ? :) suggestions: I think the last one is the best idea, because some of these lists tend to be *large* (check out List of Salticidae species ;) and thus unwieldy; and subfamilies are as i understand it often disputed (genera get moved around a lot), so this could lead to confusion now, and in the future. However, i think it *would* be very nice and even important to have as many subfamily pages as possible; as i said, i just could not find any good information on this part of the hierarchy.
 * make two kinds of lists: one naked, that can be updated, one annotated, like the one you are doing.
 * create sub-pages (eg, for Lists subfamilies) that will be edited by hand. New information from the automatically generated lists can then also be updated by hand.
 * or, one could go to the genus level. whenever you have a common name for a species, create a genus stub for it, and insert all or (if too many) all relevant species there, together with the names.

The only real benefit of doing it the first or second way that i can think of right now would be that one would have an immediate overview. but i think most people would be better served when they use the WP search for the common name and would then be directed to the genus, or species page if it exists.

if you want, i can do the work of creating the subfamily and genera stubs.

One of several reasons (the others being mainly a matter of priority) why i didn't do the split into subfamilies myself is that i did not find a good source for this. Platnick's WSC is a single authoritative source, very nice for our purposes. It would be really cool if something like that exists at the subfamily level, but I don't think it does.

cheers --Sarefo 01:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, I've made two types of edits; sorting into subfamilies (only for the tarantulas), and adding common names to some species. The subfamilies problem could be dealt with by making genus templates, and including them from various places (though the template police might complain about that... :)  The other issue, common names, may be harder to deal with.  One other suggestion--including a comment in the code to the effect of &lt;!-- this list is machine generated; do not edit-->.  --EngineerScotty 04:39, 27 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Subfamiles do exist in spiders. I would suggest checking the Tree of LIfe webpages (tolweb.org) for information on the araneomorph subfamilies.  The tree of life website is run by Wayne and his twin brother David Maddison - both very well respected scientists.  Wayne is an arachnologist who specializes in the jumping spider genus Habronattus.Dolomedes 19:31, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Species lists: split by alphabet

 * User:Ardric47 started to split the larger family species lists into smaller chunks. Probably this is a good idea, but let's not rush things. These lists are automatically generated, and this should be considered in any changes on them.
 * What I think speaks against it is that linking is more complex with split pages: You always have to check back and forth where the pages where split (in case Araneidae: A, B-F, G-M, N-Z). Before that it was just diversity_link=List of Araneidae species. So, pro: smaller files, contra: easy to produce "dead" anchor links by accident when writing pages --Sarefo 23:00, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Very true. The best way to resolve this would be to divide it into subfamily pages, if such subfamilies existed. Do they? Ardric47 00:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * That was also the first idea I had. However, I could not find anything about subfamilies. I'm relying heavily on Platnick's World Spider Catalog, and he only recognizes Families, Genera, Species and Subspecies. I would like to find such a list of subfamilies, but so far, i had no success, and I'm not even sure it exists. But see Theraphosidae for an example where User:EngineerScotty is working on organizing the species into subfamilies. btw, I reverted the Araneidae species list so that I can use it the old way, but of course linked to the split pages. This way, I can work like I used to until we found a solution. Sarefo 00:55, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I moved this conversation below the related one I had with EngineerScotty earlier; at the moment, everything is still a bit chaotic in the project pages, we still need to sort out where everything has its place :) --Sarefo 03:15, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Theraphosid sub-project
hi,

while browsing the Theraphosidae category tree, i got the idea that a Theraphosid sub-project could make sense. cheers --Sarefo 02:46, 27 July 2006 (UTC)


 * It could... the spider collectors community does have some useful pictures, if we could get them to donate them under the GFDL or similar. OTOH, you might run into folks there with rather anti-academic attitudes; I certainly wouldn't use arachnoboards and other tarantula forums.  as a reliable source for spider info, at least not without a major grain of salt.  --EngineerScotty 04:39, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Spider participants
Hello, I was directed here from my page on Dolomedes. I think your project is a much needed one, given all the folklore, myths, and misinformation about spiders! I'm mostly an expert in Dolomedes, though I'm fairly knowledgeable about most of the lycosoids (members of the superfamily Lycosoidea). The Dolomedes page is a work in progress, I hope to add a lot more content once I finish my move to South Dakota next month.

I have one correction - POM, the spider you have labelled as Dolomedes scriptus, is actually a female Dolomedes tenebrosus. D. scriptus females have W like markings on the abdomen, and tend towards grayish body color (north) or darker, almost black (seen while I was at spider camp in North Carolina). Unfortunately there are a lot of mislabelled pictures on the web, but I'm doing my best to correct them!

If you would like, I could contact some of the folks you have listed as sources of photographs, or contact some of my colleagues for photos to use here. Jerry Rovner and Fred Coyle are both retired. Rick Vetter is very vocal on misinformation on spider bites, I've seen a couple of his passionate talks about Loxoceles reclusa (brown recluse). Another person you may contact is Chuck Kristensen, who is very knowledgeable on spider venoms (he is the founder of SpiderPharm). --User:Dolomedes 04:34, 30 July 2006 (UTC)


 * that would be great! so that's the reason why i could not reach Fred Coyle :) by mistake, i sent an email to iirc Paul Coyle, who is a professor for sociology on the same university where Fred used to be. I think it would be important to license all pictures under something like Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5; so that commercial works are explicitely allowed, but only if they also use the same license. I had some people that wanted to license pictures to wikipedia, but only under a non-commercial license, and I think that could actually be detrimental, because there would be all these nice pictures, and once you want to make a book from it, you would realize you cannot use most of them. when there's no picture, there will be more effort to upload ones with a more ideal license. About the venom thing, Ed Nieuwenhuys mentioned he would send me an interesting draft about this soon. He says it's completely overrated. --Sarefo 04:14, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Spider article
I believe it could be prudent to split the current taxonomy section of the main spider article into Taxonomy, dealing with the *Taxonomy*, and Diversity, moving most of the info from the current taxonomy section there. 'hunting spiders' and such has nothing to do with taxonomy, because that's not how spiders are organized in taxonomy. Working on it atm. --Sarefo 15:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not happy with the diversity section; shouldn't these be integrated into the respective subsections (eg., web building, hunting, etc.)? Or is there maybe a better angle that could give a maybe three-paragraph overview over spider diversity? --Sarefo 19:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * You will run into some difficulties there as well. To quote Jon Coddington & Herb Levi, "Once again understanding spider phylogeny seems to be not so much a question of finding characters as it is of allocating homoplasy.'  Some groups, such as the salticids (jumping spiders) are well defined.  But many families are not.  Most spider families are in serious need of revision, and that includes my beloved pisaurids.  Even when the familes are well defined, such as Lycosidae, you will have exceptions to the rule.  For example, the lycosid genus Sossipus builds a funnel web and exhibits extended maternal care (beyond carrying the spiderlings on her back).  Another genus, Pirata, is semi-aquatic.  Some Pardosa are also semi-aquatic.  Rosie Gillespie and Greta Binford studied the orb weaving genus, Tetragnatha, which normally build webs, but some species have abandoned the web and have become raptorial. --Dolomedes
 * By coincidence I was reading the Coddington/Levi just today :)
 * I was thinking about spider diversity not so much in terms of phylogeny (that's what the taxonomy section is for), but in terms of life styles, to give the reader a quick overview of what the range of spider types/behavior is. I'll check later if it makes sense to create such a section, or if it's easier to just scrap it on the main Spider page. --Sarefo 03:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

DANGER!!! ;)
hey P0M and scotty,

maybe we could find some distinct place(s) where all the venomousness information goes, nicely sorted and all, and direct interested people there instead of permeating it into all general articles. Me for example, I'm not in the least interested in the presumed danger that spiders pose. I've never been bitten by any, don't know anybody who has, and find it problematic to perpetuate the view that spiders are a dangerous nuisance. I know you don't mean it this way, but, you know, people tend to extract the view from what they read that they already have.

While editing for example, i found it on the main spider page under "taxonomy", now under Types of spiders, and so on.

Types of spiders starts with a key to bite severity; when there are 40,000 species, and only 40 are supposed to be dangerous, why start by sorting them after this criterium?

I think you're doing a good job in sorting out the often conflicting information on spider venom. Let's eg. put it into Spider bites, and link there.

cheers --Sarefo 16:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed, FTMP. Information on spider bites and such should go in one of three places:
 * A short section near the bottom of spider, much like we have now but even more abridged (say, one or two paragraphs)
 * The Poisonous spiders article, renamed to whatever we feel appropriate. I still vote for spider bite or spider bites; as the article at present discusses more than just the stuff that comes out of the fangs.
 * Information specific to a particular spider taxon can go in the appropriate article, i.e. widow spider or Sicarius (spider).

--EngineerScotty 16:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Sacrificial males
The Sacrificial males section in the main Spider article is too long, there should be an equal level of depth in all sections. any ideas where could be a good place to go into much detail on this topic? I can't think of a good name for a page title. --Sarefo 17:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * how about an article Spider cannibalism or something like that? This could contain the issue of males being eaten by females, but go beyond that, for example by mentioning that Pholcus phalangioides eats her young if they're too weak to hatch by themselves, and diverse other stuff. But I cannot come up with a nice title atm. --Sarefo 20:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It would depend on how you want to break this down. Sacrificial males, to me, means the species where the males offer themselves up to the female to be eaten. Maydianne Andrade has done a lot of work on this somewhat unusual behavior, working with the red-backed spiders in Australia. Sexual cannibalism (unwilling males) is fairly common in spiders and well-documented. Spider cannibalism is also very common, since most spiders are opportunistic. Some genera, such as Portia, specialize in eating other spiders (Robert Jackson is the authority on Portia). -- User:Dolomedes 00:30, 4 August 2006

Poisonous spiders -> Spider bite move requested
I've formally requested that Poisonous spiders be moved to Spider bite; as the latter page exists and has non-trivial edit history, this action requires an administrator to perform. Please express your opinion as to this move on Talk:Poisonous spiders, so a consensus (for or against) can be established. --EngineerScotty 23:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Thermgraphic images of spiders


Dear spider group, I'm pretty new at wiki, so forgive me if I'm at the wrong table. But I would like to know if thermographic images are interesting enough to be part of the spider pages. We made a pretty big collection of this kind of images to learn a little about thermoregulation tools of animals. I'm a bit looking for the right spots an persons who are interested in this subjes aswell. --Nutscode 20:00, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


 * oh, nice pictures :) I'm sure we can find a place for this nice picture. do you btw know the species of tarantula? if you have any questions, regarding the spider pages, or WP in general, don't hesitate to contact me :) --Sarefo 10:55, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Some images
I've taken a few pictures of spiders. Not very high quality, but maybe they can be used somewhere until better images are found. I don't know what species they are; they're from the northeastern US. Anyone with a good camera should try the same trick of attracting lots of insects to a light at night and then taking pictures of the spiders that show up for the feast. I bet you could get some nice ones. — Omegatron 14:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

anti spider
It would be nice for each page to state the best preventive measures, killing agents or methods, as many seek the subject looking for that. 74.33.42.42 05:09, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the premise is flawed, that all 40,000 species are harmful. In fact, only a handful seem to be, and there seem to be already people that are writing about this specific subject. --Sarefo 01:03, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Wildlife Barnstar
There is currently a barnstar proposal at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals for a barnstar which would be available for use for this project. Please feel free to visit the page and make any comments you see fit. Badbilltucker 15:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:22, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Ant with chelicerae
I took these two pictures this summer of two ants (Lasius niger) carrying around a pair of chelicerae and a leg of some unfortunate spider. They are most likely from the same creature. Does anyone have an idea as to which family of spider these parts might belong to? Thanks, Iron C hris |  (talk) 17:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * ahww, poor spider :( alas, i don't think there's any easy possibility to determine the species. DNA analysis might help ;) --Sarefo 21:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh well, too bad. I really wish I was there to see them attack that spider. It seems like quite a daring move for a bunch of little ants with a head the size of one chelicera! Iron C hris |  (talk) 03:04, 10 January 2007 (UTC)