Category talk:Species described in the 21st century

Untitled

Hi,

This category (and articles) is huge misnomer. Many forms are not "species" but subspecies. Most were not "discovered" but known from long time, many were not "described" anew but earlier described as subspecies and elevated (or re-elevated) to species. Some are rediscovered since some time.

I suggest renaming.

Which kingdoms?

This category title is species, which does not specify kingdom, but the text only mentions animals. I'm going to reword that text and create some subcategories. --Ginkgo100^talk 19:47, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Title

This should be called "Taxa described in the...". For two reasons. 1.) You can then include all ranks, not just species. 2.) It avoids the issue of when organisms are "described" before the taxon is established (as mentioned above). It's more accurate when taking about authorship. Rocket000 (talk) 02:51, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The second point is moot: the convention is to include articles in the category based on their first valid description, whether it be based on a basionym of another rank or not. We've discussed the first point at the Tree of Life projects before and there were three schools of thought: 1) Prefer all-encompassing "taxa described in the..." categories, 2) Prefer separate categories for the different ranks because including them all in one "taxa described in the..." category could be difficult to browse, or 3) "Meh." I'm not sure if I'm convinced of the arguments for either option 1 or 2. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 04:07, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

For reason number 2, I guess I meant the problem is that confusion can arise over what "described" means, but if taxonomic validity is the only factor than the same rules that apply to date citation can be used. There's still a few issues with that (suppressed names, nomen oblitum, etc.) but works for the most part. We're not talking about when they were discovered. Now that I think about it, the separation of ranks makes for sense. With the species ones, it's actual new-to-science organisms really, whereas the other ranks are simply names. Rocket000 (talk) 21:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Are you more familiar with the ICBN or the ICZN? The two perspectives are quite different and could influence any decisions made about how to organize these categories. I've been planning to implement a description for every species category, e.g. the note at the top of Category:Plants described in 2009 and I link to an essay I created from the botany perspective: Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Description in year categories. What do you think?

Yes, there is a bit of ambiguity in the category name with regards to the word "described", but I feel that it's widely understood that this implies the first formal description (in the case of botany) after the year 1753 when Linnaeus established the nomenclatural rules and is better than the longer, less ambiguous title of perhaps, Category:Plant taxa first validly described in 2009. I've tried to initiate interest in a discussion on how to deal with these issues and gain consensus, but not many people commented. If you'd like, we can see if anyone else at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of life would be interested in opining.

You can also browse how I've envisioned setting up the category hierarchy at User:Rkitko/sandbox6 and see if it makes sense to you. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 22:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

ICZN for sure. I'm not that familiar with the rules for botany (although I like them better based on my limited experience, there's a little more objectivity and it's easier to trace the authorship of modifications / subsequent designation). I like the category description, it clears up the ambiguity. For plants anyway. And I think the names are clear enough, at least to anyone that knows anything about how species get their scientific name.

It's common practice in zoology to only cite the original author/date. Parentheses account for genus changes, otherwise there's no indication if any changes were made by someone else. The citation is the same. Replacement names, new (mis)spellings, unjustified emendations, etc. all get new authorship. Zoology also has very messy synonymy. The majority of them are officially subjective (to be objective they must have the same type). Besides all that, one thing that may be an issue for zoology: it says "formally and validly described according to ... in that year". What if the name is no longer valid but was at the time? Rocket000 (talk) 06:03, 29 January 2010 (UTC)