Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Archive 13

Hybrids in taxoboxes
(moved from User talk:UtherSRG)

As far as I can tell, there is no provision in taxoboxes for a hybrid. This can lead to an anomalous taxobox such as on the page Amanatsu. A template for hybrids is lacking. There should also be made a distinction between natural hybrids, manmade hybrids and intergeneric hybrids (such as in some orchids), grex, and polybrid. On the other hand, the taxobox could contain a general 'hybrid' template (with room for the parents of the hybrid), while the distinction could be made in the article. And then there is the problem of the cultivars. I don't think anyone has bothered yet describing a cultivar on a separate page. But whenever this should happen, a template should be at hand. JoJan 09:47, 20 May 2005 (UTC)


 * There's a well-known hybrid at Lemon. Gdr 11:10, 2005 May 20 (UTC)


 * I've editted Amanatsu to look like Lemon. I must admit that I'm not well versed in botany at all, so I'm not sure what to do about hybrids. What are all the possibilities? What would be a good format to distinguish a "regular" species from a hybrid, and different types of hybrids from each other? These questions and a discussion leading to their answers are probably better had on the WP:TOL or taxobox talk page. - UtherSRG 11:58, May 20, 2005 (UTC)


 * A hybrid is NOT a species, but a cross between species of the same genus (interspecific hybrids or primary hybrids) or between different genera with compatible chromosomes (intergeneric hybrids), or between a species and a hybrid or even between two hybrids (complex hybrid). A grex refers to the group of progeny of a specific cross. Therefore the 'genus' template does not apply. See: hybrid.


 * Interspecific hybrids are written like this : Populus x canadensis = Populus deltoides x P. nigra (the x not in italics). They even can have cultivars such as : Populus x canadensis 'Marilandica'


 * Intergeneric hybrids start with an x : xAmmocalamagrostis is a hybrid grass genus (from the genera Ammophila and Calamagrostis)
 * Should there be a space after the x? - UtherSRG 21:03, May 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * Therefore I propose a new template for hybrids, replacing the genus template. The 'binomial name' template should then be replaced by a new template 'parents' JoJan 14:27, 20 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Ok. I think I get it. Taxobox hybrid entry would replace Taxobox genus entry for intergeneric hybrids. Taxobox section parentage would replace Taxobox section binomial and take two paremeters. Looks like we also need a cultivar entry and a parents section that includes a cultivar. - UtherSRG 14:50, May 20, 2005 (UTC)


 * (JoJan editted the above to say all hybrids instead of intergeneric).


 * I amend: Taxobox hybrid entry would replace Taxobox genus entry for intergeneric hybrids and would replaced Taxobox species entry for interspecies hybrids. Better? - UtherSRG 17:31, May 20, 2005 (UTC)


 * OK. But I would like some input from other TOL participants. JoJan 19:15, 20 May 2005 (UTC)


 * It's a nice idea, but what actual difference would there be in the visual handling? Circeus 19:29, May 20, 2005 (UTC)


 * Sounds generally good to me - I've been improvising with rose cultivars. We don't always know parentage, and other times it can be more complicated than will fit neatly in a taxobox (see Rosa 'Anne Harkness' for instance), so taxobox parentage should be optional. Stan 05:37, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

I've started experimenting with th Lemon and 'Anne Harkness' taxoboxes on /hybrids. Visually, there's really not much different from the existing entry and binomial sections. If someone could point me to existing articles where what I've got won't work, or where additional templates will be needed, please do! :) -


 * Some other hybrid articles for you to experiment on:
 * Geranium x magnificum
 * Grapefruit
 * Orange (fruit)
 * Florist's Cineraria
 * Key lime
 * Lime (fruit)
 * Pomelo
 * Gdr 10:29, 2005 May 23 (UTC)

I've done the first two. The others will look identical to one of the previous samples. - UtherSRG 12:35, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

In technical literature, the multiplication symbol × is used; however, this isn't required, and an ordinary letter x is acceptable in most situations, which I would think would include wikipedia. Within a hybrid name (nothotaxon) the 'x' is usually italicised (e.g. Picea x lutzii); in a hybrid formula it is not (e.g. Picea sitchensis x Picea glauca). In interspecific hybrids within a genus, the x is lower case; in intergeneric hybrids the x is uppercase (e.g. X Asplenophyllitis confluens), and yes, with a space. Of cultivars, they are not taxa, so should not have a taxobox; whatever cultibox is designed should look distinct and not be confusable with a taxobox. I'd suggest it could omit all the classification above the rank of genus. MPF 18:07, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Some style points.


 * Ok. Nix the cutivar. I've replaced "x" with &amp;times; and corrected the italics. - UtherSRG 22:55, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Old-style taxoboxes
I did a search for articles using old-style taxoboxes (using HTML tables or wiki markup tables instead of Taxobox begin and other templates) and found 2,552 such articles. These are listed at User:Gdr/Nomialbot/Report 2005-05-24. (This compares with 3,582 articles using new-style taxoboxes.)

I don't recommend anyone start working on this list! The chances are that most articles can be converted automatically, leaving a residue of awkward cases needing attention by hand. Gdr 17:29, 2005 May 24 (UTC)


 * Yay! You're my new hero! *grins* - UtherSRG 18:51, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

It looks from the first couple of hundred as though there will be about 10% of awkward cases. What I propose to do for these cases is to add the computed (but partly incorrect) taxobox in a comment at the top of the article, leaving the old taxobox in place. I'll list the articles where I've done this and then you or other editors can fix them by hand. Is that acceptable? Gdr 12:01, 2005 May 25 (UTC)


 * I'd rather edit 255 by hand than 2552 by hand... so yes, this is acceptable... it'll give me something to do while I'm at work. *grins* - UtherSRG 12:08, May 25, 2005 (UTC)


 * that will make my work in category:Birds a categorization (down to genera) one mostly, I guess. Circeus 18:07, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Pachypodium
Something odd going on here! (and here and here and here and . . . ) - MPF 19:13, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Formatting of taxoboxes
When a taxobox has a binomial section, should the Species entry also be bold italic, or just ordinary italic? (When the article is about the species)? WikiProject Tree of Life/Taxobox Usage says:


 * The final taxon is bold, due to it being the subject of the article.

This is ambiguous: the "final taxon" could mean the binomial section, or it could mean the final taxon in the "placement" section, that is, the species. The former interpretation gives rise to a taxobox looking like Yakushima White Pine; the latter interpretation gives rise to one like Black-chinned Hummingbird. (I note that the example taxobox in WikiProject Tree of Life/Taxobox Usage favours the latter interpretation.)

Which is right? (Or is it different for plant and animals, as suggested by the example code at the top of WikiProject Tree of Life/Taxobox Usage?) It would be nice to agree on this so as to avoid going round re-formatting each others' work! Gdr 14:53, 2005 May 25 (UTC)


 * Yakushima White Pine is incorrect. Black-chinned Hummingbird is correct. - UtherSRG 16:25, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

The consensus was that the final entry in the placement section should be bolded, since it only includes the organisms in question. I'll fix the samples to reflect this. Josh


 * Yes. Another way to look at it are that the species entry and the binomial "entry" are two different ways of naming the article (except that we don't use the G. speces form because of ambiguity), and all potential article names in the article should be bold someplace in the article. - UtherSRG 16:31, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Old-style taxoboxes needing conversion
My program Nomialbot completed work on 2,374 articles with HTML taxoboxes with templatized ranks. Of these, 2,216 were converted automatically (I hope without introducing too many mistakes &mdash; there were a lot of different formats of HTML taxobox out there). 158 were too awkward to be converted automatically (that's about 6.7%). These will have to be converted by hand (I added the partial conversion, commented out, to each of these articles to provide a start).

The list of articles needing work is at User:Gdr/Nomialbot/Report 2005-05-26.

There are several other sets of articles with old-style taxoboxes. There are 178 with wiki table markup and templatized ranks (example: White-eye) and an as yet unknown number that don't use templatized ranks (example: Pompeii worm). I'll get to these eventually... (There will of course be more awkward cases needing conversion by hand.) Gdr 23:48, 2005 May 25 (UTC)


 * Excellent!! - UtherSRG 01:02, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. But there were quite a few mistakes, as you can see from my talk page. I think I fixed the worst of them. Let me know if you spot other mistakes made by the bot and I'll fix those too. Gdr 10:13, 2005 May 26 (UTC)


 * Good work GDR. It was shocking checking my watchlist this morning and realizing just how many taxa are on it! Pcb21| Pete 15:53, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I went through 341 articles with HTML taxoboxes but without templatized ranks. I'm afraid I didn't do so well at converting them automatically: these articles are older than the ones with templatized ranks and have a wider range of formats. Of these, 239 were converted automatically, and 102 were too awkward (that's 30%). As with the first batch, I added the partial conversion, commented out, to each article, and added the articles to the list at User:Gdr/Nomialbot/Report 2005-05-26.

I went through a further 201 articles with wiki markup taxoboxes. All of the conversions from this and previous batches needing to be finished by hand have been done. Thank you to everyone who worked on them, especially User:DanielCD, User:Quadell, and User:UtherSRG.

This means that all the taxoboxes that I know how to find are now in the correct format! If you know of any I missed, or any way of finding them, let me know. Gdr 16:03, 2005 May 30 (UTC)

Lepidopteran taxoboxes
Among the HTML taxoboxes that weren't possible to convert automatically were a number of lepidopteran taxoboxes with some extra information that doesn't fit into the current taxobox scheme. Swallowtail Butterfly is a typical example, with "author", "type species" and "diversity" sections. The "author" section naturally turns into Taxobox authority; for the other two I propose the new templates Taxobox section type species and Taxobox section diversity. You can see an example of my proposed scheme at Geometer moth.

(These taxoboxes also go a bit overboard on ranks, but that's another issue entirely.)

Please comment; I won't convert any other lepidoptera unless there's a consensus about the format to use.

Is there a lepidoptera project or keen lepidopteran editors that we should contact? Gdr 10:32, 2005 May 26 (UTC)


 * As the prepetrator of these additional entries, your arrangement looks fine to me.--Keith Edkins 12:15, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for asking for my input. Looking at the two proposed templates, the type species would only be applicable for family taxoboxes. Are taxoboxes formatted differently for different taxa? I have to admit I'm not an expert on taxobox formats, I only use them!

As for diversity, I guess this could be used in any article (apart from subspecies and I can't imagine there are many articles solely about subspecies). My only reservation is that this information (number of subtaxa) is not always readily available, especially global data, so this might be left blank in most cases. When I find out this kind of data, I usually incorporate it into the main text and I think this usually looks OK. I'd be happy to continue doing it this way but I have no strong objection to putting it in the taxobox (I have in fact put a list of genera into the taxobox in the Hepialidae article and I'm still trying to decide if it looks OK there or if it should go into the main text). Richard Barlow 12:49, 26 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I should make it clear: this is not a proposal to add these templates to all taxoboxes! It's only a proposal for how taxoboxes that already had this information should look when converted to templates.


 * So not every article needs to use these templates: only when the information is available and an editor wants to add it to the box rather than (or as well as) mention it in the text. So you don't need to worry about lots of articles with blank boxes for "diversity"! (And you're right: the type species template is only appropriate for families and higher taxa.) Gdr 13:17, 2005 May 26 (UTC)
 * Oh goodie! More informaiton I can add to the primate taxoboxes. *grins* Um... genera and subgenera certainly have type species. Check out many of the more recent primate articles on Wikispecies]. - UtherSRG 17:11, May 26, 2005 (UTC)
 * We could go even further (gurk!! why am I adding this?!) and add details of the type specimens of individual species . . . MPF 22:18, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Sorry! I misunderstood. Like I said I know very little about template formatting. I think the new templates look just fine. Richard Barlow 13:29, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Cultivars
User:JoJan wrote above:


 * And then there is the problem of the cultivars. I don't think anyone has bothered yet describing a cultivar on a separate page. But whenever this should happen, a template should be at hand.

I can find four articles on cultivars: All of these have taxoboxes that go wrong at the bottom in various ways, for example with the cultivar name appearing in place of the species. So I think it may be time to work out what kind of box a cultivar should have, if any, and what should go in it. Gdr 08:45, 2005 May 27 (UTC)
 * Dahlia 'Bishop of Llandaff'
 * Rhododendron 'President Roosevelt'
 * Erysimum 'Chelsea Jacket'
 * Erythronium 'Pagoda'

Generally, I'd reckon that cultivars, unless of exceptional significance and major commercial importance (such as apple cultivars like 'Golden Delicious') are not sufficiently notable to deserve pages to themselves. They should be covered at the page of the species or hybrid they are derived from, with any page created redirected there. Certainly none of the above four merit their own pages, they are not sufficiently notable and only exist because someone had uploaded a photo of them.

For major commercial cultivars (e.g. the 16 apple cultivars that already have pages), a completely separate cultibox (NOT a taxobox: a cultivar is not a taxon!) should be developed. This should perhaps include the following: Cultivar name The taxon it is derived from Date of development Person or company which selected it Parentage from other cultivars, if known (it is, for many rose cvs, but not for most other cvs) It should not include the rest of the higher ranks listed in taxoboxes (to help minimise confusion with taxoboxes); also a different colour to plant taxoboxes at least in part MPF 10:01, 27 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I think rose breeders might disagree with you on whether their efforts are worthy of encyclopedic treatment! I just took another 1,500 pictures of rose cultivars this week in San Jose, a single article describing them all would be rather large. :-) I've been pondering a specialized "rosabox" that would summarize the most salient info - subtype, color(s), etc. Stan 05:50, 28 May 2005 (UTC)


 * The very fact that you have 1,500 cultivars of the same thing in one place there almost by definition makes most of them not memorable! Think of them like individual people, go to a town and get a photo of every inhabitant, one or two of them will be notable people and deserve an article, the rest aren't, and don't. - MPF 10:20, 28 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I was at the Heritage Rose Garden, notable for its collection of 3,200+ varieties, the largest in the western hemisphere they say. I would claim that the majority of its specimens represent notable cultivars - after all, that's why they set up the HRG in the first place, to serve as a reference collection. I think it's kind of narrow-minded to declare that cultivars which have been in development by hundreds of people for centuries, and are each grown by thousands more around the world, are somehow less important than, say, a species of pine that has only ever been observed by a dozen scientists. People have been very accepting of some of the completely obscure and specialized material that you've added, you should accord editors working in horticulture the same degree of respect. Stan 22:49, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Hi Stan - agreed, to a degree; I think you'll find that most of those 3,200 cvs are not grown by thousands of people. Something like 95% of the commercial market is taken up by a handful of rose cultivars (the ones that Wal-Mart etc sell), with another 100-200 or so forming 4% (the ones available from a good range of specialist nurseries), and the remaining 3,000 less than 1% (sold for a few years by the breeder and perhaps a few friends, and then abandoned as a bad job). By all means do the major ones, but I really don't think that the 3,000 are significant. I suspect you'd find the breeders would agree, after most of their new cvs bombed on the market. Of course that still leaves 200 or so to do, plenty enough to give most people repetitive strain injury :-) MPF 21:48, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
 * The ARS encyclopedia says it limits itself to "2,000 of the best rose species and cultivars", and it only has limited overlap with the HRG collection, which has more historical types. I suspect the actual limiting factor is likely to be info availability - we may know the name and general appearance of a 1817 Vibert cultivar, but that's not enough to support its own article. Stan 21:27, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

I think we all agree that there are going to be a lot of notable cultivars, even if we don't agree on exactly which ones are notable. So it would useful to design cultivar and hybrid infoboxes. I've made up a proposal: you can see four example of the proposal on the right.

Is there any other information we might want to put in the box? For registered cultivars, might we want to say which International Cultivar Registration Authority they are registered with? Gdr 15:46, 2005 May 29 (UTC)


 * Of the boxes, of course not all cultivars are of hybrid origin, many are selections within a species, making the "Hybrid origin" line inaccurate. Maybe the current "species" line could be changed to "Species or hybrid origin", and the "Hybrid parentage" to just "Parentage"?
 * Also once it's up and running, it would be good if the {{Taxobox ... code could be changed to {{Cultivarbox ... to minimise mix-ups - MPF 21:48, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree with both your points. (1) I changed the Erysimum example to show how a box might look when the cultivar is not a hybrid. (2) Yes, before we roll out an acceptable design, we should of course create an appropriate set of new templates. (Now done.) Gdr 22:27, 2005 May 29 (UTC)


 * Why not just make an article for a species and another article that cover's all the cultivars. Of course it would only be the most important ones. I like the 1a proposed taxobox. Also consider how easy it will be to get info, such as origin and hybrid parantage and authority. Many people who write plant articles may not know this information. But we could always put it in for them. I often get confused by hybrids and cultivars, but that's just me. I'd definitely like to see the species name though, because that gives me an orientation to what I'm looking at. --DanielCD 02:14, 30 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Case in point: I "redid" the taxobox at Rhododendron 'President Roosevelt' a while back and didn't know what species to put. That line is still blank, so someone might want to take a look at that article. --DanielCD 02:17, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

I'll take your points in order: (1) if editors want to make articles about groups of cultivars, that's fine. The question we're asking here is not what cultivar articles to create, but what (if any) infobox the existing articles should have and what it should look like. (2) My proposal is not that every cultivar article must have information on parentage and origin. But this information is certainly interesting and encyclopedic, and the infobox format might encourage editors to do the research. And it will be OK to write "parentage unknown". (3) You'd like to see the species name. But not all cultivars have a species in the usual sense. That's one reason why it's inappropriate to have a taxobox in a cultivar article. For example, Brugmansia 'Feingold' given above is an intergeneric hybrid since B. 'Charles Grimaldi' is a hybrid of B. candida &times; Datura cubensis. Obviously the cultivar infobox would have the species when there is one, for example the Golden Delicious article would give the species Malus domestica. (4) It appears that the reason why you don't know what species to put in the Rhododendron 'President Roosevelt' article is that no-one knows its parentage! (In principle the parentage might be discoverable by genetic analysis.) Gdr 11:15, 2005 May 30 (UTC)


 * I made some templates and wrote an article explaining how to use my proposal. See WikiProject Tree of Life/Cultivar infobox. Please comment. Gdr 10:28, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

 {{Cultivar begin | name = Proposed cultivar infobox (Cultivar Group) Cabbage}} {{Cultivar image | image = | caption = }} {{Cultivar species | species = Brassica oleracea}} {{Cultivar group | group = Capitata Group}} {{Cultivar origin | origin = Mediterranean, 1st century}} {{Cultivar group members}} Many; see text.

{{Cultivar begin | name = Proposed cultivar infobox (Cultivar Group member) Lacinato Kale}} {{Cultivar image | image = | caption = }} {{Cultivar species | species = Brassica oleracea}} {{Cultivar group | group = Acephala Group}} {{Cultivar name | name = 'Lacinato'}} {{Cultivar origin | origin = Italy, 19th century}}


 * Looks good; a few small points: (1, should've thought to mention this before!) we also need a format for Cultivar Groups (see e.g. Cauliflower; they are explained a bit at cultivar); (2) an emphasis that cvs are capitalised as well as not italicised; (3) we'll need to come up with a category system for them that doesn't confuse current categories which are in effect species indexes (my suggestion would be to set up all cultivars of an order, family or genus as a separate subcategory, e.g. which then appears as a subcat of  ); (4) a minor one - most orchard apple cultivars are not hybrids, they're derived from a single species. - MPF 12:37, 31 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your comments. (1) I added some templates and examples for Cultivar Groups; see right. Let me know what you think. (2) I added this emphasis to the instructions. (3) I'll leave the categorization up to you and other editors. (4) According to our hybrid article, the word "hybrid" is used by plant breeders for intraspecific hybrids as well as interspecific hybrids. Is this terminology unsatisfatory? If so, please suggest an alternative. Gdr 10:44, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)
 * Thanks; on #4, it is a bit unsatisfactory though difficult to know what to do (I've been wanting to edit the hybrid article on this for a while, but haven't thought of a good wording yet), as most botanists at least restrict 'hybrid' to interspecific, though horticulturalists tend to be looser. My suggestion would be 'cross' or (like animals) 'crossbred'. - MPF 21:09, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Redirects
Could I ask for some advice please. I have noticed Arctiidae redirects to Tiger moth (moth). I think this should be the other way round: I don't know the worldwide figures but of the 30 arctiids resident in the UK, only 6 are "tigers". The only thing is I'm not totally sure how to do this. I'm sure there is a tutorial somewhere but I can't find it! Can anyone help? Richard Barlow 09:10, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Convert the Arctiidae page into a family page, with an individual species link to the Tiger moth page - MPF 10:20, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
 * On second thoughts, it looks like a page move to Arctiidae would be better. Click on 'move', and follow the instructions there. If it says you need admin help to do so, then post a request here for an admin to do it. - MPF 11:31, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I've never dealt with doing redirects but I'll give it a go! Richard Barlow 11:35, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Hey that was really easy, feel a bit silly for asking now! Richard Barlow 11:42, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Mimosoideae species
I'm trying to put the genus Neptunia into the subfamily Mimosoideae page, but I'm not sure to which infrafamily it belongs. I put it in the Mimoseae for now. If anyone finds out it belongs elsewhere, please let me know. I'm finding the infrafamily thing more trouble than it's worth because If you know a genus goes with a family, but don't know the infrafamily, then where do you put it? Most sources don't list infrafamilies and there is no ref given on that page. --DanielCD 14:00, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Mimoseae is correct: - MPF 17:53, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)