Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life
First, an important note for everyone to remember:
A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in these articles. These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!
Overview
This WikiProject aims primarily to represent the taxonomy and relationships of living organisms, as well as their extinct relatives, in a tree structure. Since there are millions of species, not all will be included, but we aim to handle as many as information, time, and interest permit.
This WikiProject descends from WikiProject Biology and thus from WikiProject Science. Various other WikiProjects may be based on it to better treat specific groups. Currently there are:
Article titles
In cases where there is a formal common name (e.g. birds), it should be used for page titles - for instance Peregrine Falcon, rather than Falco peregrinus. For other organisms, common names should be used when they are well-known and reasonably unique, and scientific names should be used otherwise. Note the following guidelines in using scientific names:
- Names of genera are always italicized and capitalized - Homo, Rosa, Saccharomyces.
- Names of species are always italicized and preceeded by the name of the genus, or some abbreviation thereof - Homo sapiens or H. sapiens, but never plain sapiens, since such identifiers need not be unique. They are never capitalized.
- Names of higher taxa are capitalized but not italicized - Hominidae, Mammalia, Animalia.
In cases where there a group only contains a single subgroup, the two need not be kept separate. If there is no common name, the article should go under the scientific name with the lowest rank, down to the level of genus. For instance, the division Ginkgophyta, class Ginkgoopsida, order Ginkgoales and family Ginkgoaceae only contain the single species Ginkgo biloba, so there is a single article for them at Ginkgo with the other pages redirecting to it. However, it may be noted that Ginkgophyta does have other extinct members, and so these groups may be separated out as pages on them are added.
Not all species need have separate articles. The simplest (and probably best) rule is to have no rule: if you have the time and energy to write up some particularly obscure subspecies that most people have never even heard of, go for it! As a general guideline, though, it's best to combine separate species into a single entry whenever it seems likely that there won't be enough text to make more than a short, unsatisfying stub otherwise. If the entry grows large enough to deserve splitting, that can always be done later.
A useful heuristic is to create articles in a "downwards" order, that is, family articles first, then genus, then species. If you find that information is getting thin, or the family/genus is really small, just leave the species info inline in the family or genus article, don't try to force it down any further. An exception to this is monotypic families or genera; create a species article then redirect family and genus names to it.
Taxoboxes
| Cnidaria | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific classification | ||||
| ||||
| Classes | ||||
Detailed taxonomic information, including notes on how taxa are defined and how they vary between different systems, belongs in the article proper. Where possible, however, a standard table will be provided to allow easier navigation between related groups and quick identification of what sort of organisms are being discussed. These are called taxoboxes. A typical taxobox is shown at right (it belongs on the top right of the page Cnidaria).
At the moment, there are three main sections to the taxobox:
- A header showing the name of the group, sometimes followed by a representative image.
- A table showing the placement of the group in a typical classification system.
- A list of subgroups in a typical classification system.
Other sections may also be added, such as references where particularly important, or things specific to descendant WikiProjects. Possible expansions are still being discussed.
Headers
| African Violet Template:StatusEndangered | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||
|
The main header is a common name where possible, and a generally accepted scientific name where not. In general it will be the same as the name of the corresponding article. Headers are colored to indicate what kingdom the organisms belong to, following this system:
| Animalia | "pink" |
|---|---|
| Plantae | "lightgreen" |
| Fungi | "lightblue" |
| Protista | "khaki" |
| Bacteria | "lightgrey" |
| Archaea | "darkgray" |
The eukaryote domain or empire, which does not fit into the above kingdoms, currently use the color "e0d0b0". Note that, thanks to a quirk in the HTML standard, "darkgray" is spelt with an a and "lightgrey" is spelt with an e. Swapping these will work on some browsers but by no means all. Note that for most, the quotation marks around the tags are optional, but they are part of the standard and should probably be left in.
In addition to the name of the organism or group, the primary header may include a second line that gives its conservation status. This should be one of the following wikipedia msg tags, preceded by a newline (<br>):
- Template:StatusSecure
- Template:StatusVulnerable
- Template:StatusEndangered
- Template:StatusCritical
- Template:StatusExtinctW
- Template:StatusExtinct
- Template:StatusUnknown
- Template:StatusSeeText
Placement
The placement block is marked by a link to Scientific classification. In cases where the taxonomy is unusually controversial, a description like Typical classification may be preferable.
| Red wood ant | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||
| Binomial name | ||||||||||||||||||
| Formica rufa |
In general only groups with major ranks - kingdoms, phyla and divisions, classes, orders, families, genera, and species - need be listed. Things like suborders and superclasses should only be added when they are well-recognised and provide some insight into the nature of the taxon in question. For instance, consider the table shown at right. For most readers, just including the major ranks would be more than enough information, but the subfamily and tribe may provide some insight to those interested in the relationships between different ants. On the other hand, adding things like domain Eukaryote, subkingdom Protostomia, subphylum Hexapoda, and so forth is mostly useless since they tend to be unstable and, depending on how much biology the reader has seen, will either be completely obvious or completely obscure. In cases where the classification is totally uncertain, it may even be worth omitting major ranks. Use your discretion.
Also note the (centered) binomial name given after the tables. This is necessary because species names are not actually unique, and it is probably best to avoid writing them separately. The bolding is used to mark the group under consideration. In cases like Ginkgo biloba, mentioned above, all levels up to the division Ginkgophyta may also be bolded, and the corresponding ranks should be bolded as well.
Other taxa should be linked to the relevant pages, except perhaps extremely obscure organisms which are unlikely to receive further treatment. On many pages the ranks have also been made into links - Kingdom, Phylum, and so forth. However, these for the most part are just redirects to scientific classification, so this is redundant.
Subdivisions
The subdivision list is marked with a header saying what rank the subdivisions are at - for instance Phyla, Classes, Orders, and so forth. Where ranks have not yet stabilized it it may be better to say Subgroups or Taxa. This is followed by a list of subgroups, usually a single cell with entries separated by <br> tags. In cases where there are so many that the taxobox would be several times longer than the article, or where the classification is so confused that a glib summary is impossible, it should just say something like (many, see text).
Sometimes it is convenient to represent more than one level of classification in the subdivision list. In that case the lower level groups may moved over to the right by prefixing them with markers - usually three the first level, and then one to three more for each subsequent one. Remember, though, that this should mainly be done when the subgroups are not worthy of separate articles. Taxoboxes are too cramped to include too much duplicate information.
Images and maps
The taxobox may also include a representative image, which should go right after the main header, and a range map, which should be a thumbnail at the end of the table. Note range maps aren't always appropriate - for instance, they should be omitted for ubiquitous and newly discovered groups. There isn't much room to include large or multiple images, so be cautious. Guidelines for how big taxobox images and maps should be, how they should be named and labelled, and what sorts of groups to include them for have yet to be written.
Taxonomic resources
The taxonomy of many groups is in a state of flux, and it is not always possible to find a single satisfactory classification, and we would be doing a great disservice by pretending otherwise. The best would be to try and find out what the current concensus is, if there is one, and make notes on variant systems. In this, the following resources may be helpful:
- www.itis.usda.gov - covers a lot of ground, but is often incomplete or idiosyncratic
- NCBI database
- biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/angio - flowering plants only, up-to-date scheme with comprehensive genus lists
- The Tree Of Life Web Project - generally up-to-date phylogeny, but without ranks
- Mikko's Phylogeny Archive
- Vertebrata - Japanese language, but the structure's fine and the names are in Sciencese!)
- Biosis Index to Organism Names
- uBio classification - classifications fairly deep and up to date, generally following standard form though not always among basal groups
- Systema naturae - usually gives multiple breakdowns for groups, which is sometims confusing but can be very useful
- FishBase - Huge database giving basic info on thousands of fish.
- Animal Diversity Web from the University of Michigan - Very informative
Participants
- Eclecticology
- --KQ (intermittently, when something has been dumbed down enough to be legible to the unwashed masses)
- Magnus Manske
- maveric149
- Pierre Abbat
- Ram-Man
- Dan Koehl
- Stephen Gilbert (interested in working on dinosaurs; I'm also one of the unwashed masses.)
- Trevor Dykes (I'll try. My main interest is Mesozoic mammals and the like. I do wash, but I'm strictly an amateur.)
- LDan
- WormRunner (earthworms, some other invertebrates and some plants)
- Hadal Currently focusing on fish but will write about anything with a heartbeat.
- User:seglea I have some specialist knowledge on birds, rodents and primates (which need a lot of work), but I have ready access to the technical literature and am willing to turn an amateur hand to most taxa.
- UtherSRG General cleanup.
- Josh Grosse Mostly though not entirely protists.
- Tannin Mostly birds and mammals, particularly Southern Hemisphere species.
- andy Mostly adding taxoboxes where I spot them missing, and occasionally adding articles on Amphibians