Talk:Prosimian

Paraphyletic stuff in Wikipedia

Perhaps I am a cladistics geek, but I have a problem with things I come across in Wikipedia that read like "Prosimians are the most ancestral extant primates; they represent forms that were ancestral to monkeys, apes and humans." In general I find a lot of taxonomy that isn't informed by a phylogenetic approach to encourage misunderstandings of evolution (and biology doesn't make much sense when evolutionary concepts aren't grasped) and frequently introduce teleological thinking in which we have "higher" organisms and supposedly "primitive" ones that in reality are not ancestral to the "higher" taxa. For example, it is not true to say that lorises are ancestral to apes. While it may be true that the common ancestor of both had more in common with a loris because apes and their ancestors accumulated more derived characteristics over the years, the lorises and other prosimians have of course been evolving and radiating ever since too and have derived plenty of characterisics of their own. It's this kind of thinking that has people coming out with erroneous stuff like "humans evolved from chimpanzees" instead of appreciating that both evolved from a common ancestor no longer with us. 79.68.223.68 (talk) 19:07, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Re-write coming

Regardless of whether we consider the existing article as stub or start-class, I am currently taking detailed notes with the intent of completely overhauling the article, hopefully within the next week. The re-write will commence once I finish the re-write for the related article, Strepsirrhini. This article will dive into more taxonomic and anatomical detail while focusing on the former and current uses of the word "prosimian". – Maky ^« talk » 20:38, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Excellent; much needed. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:53, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

By the way, sorry I never did this. It will come eventually. I still have my notes. I just need to find time. But it is still high on my priority list. – Maky ^« talk » 08:26, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Taxobox

I'm not certain "Prosimii" belongs in the taxobox; if we don't want to use it, I would imagine the classification should stop with Primates, and then Strepsirrhini should be listed under "Included groups" along with Tarsiiformes. Does that seen reasonable? WolfmanSF (talk) 04:49, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I've adjusted the taxobox so that it doesn't show prosimians as a rank; what you think of it now? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:34, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Thanks for catching my mistake. Honestly, I'm not sure what I would have done if I realized that I left Strepsirrhini in there. Now that I've taken some time to look at other paraphyletic group articles (like Algae), I think I'm going to omit Prosimii (Illiger, 1811) and just leave it at the order level (Primates). The included and excluded infraorders will be listed. Except for discussing the history of the taxonomy, I do not want this article to emphasize it as a taxonomic group. There are enough misinformed primatologists who still think monkeys evolved from lemurs, and I don't want to give their efforts to revive Prosimii any traction. I feel recent science should be given priority over out-dated science. As you know, Prosimii as a taxonomic group is dead. – Maky ^« talk » 08:39, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, on reflection I think this should be the style for such obsolete taxonomic units which are still used as common names: finish the taxobox with the lowest rank still in use and then list the included and excluded groups from within that rank. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:24, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Given that adapiforms are indicated as being prosimians in the article, shouldn't we change "Lemuriformes" under "Included groups" to "Strepsirrhini", or else add "Adapiformes"? WolfmanSF (talk) 17:09, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for catching this. For once, even I got fixated on only the living taxa. Both Adapiformes and Omomyiformes have been added to the list. (I also need to look into merging Tarsiiformes and Tarsier and moving Omomyidae to Omomyiformes... but that's another small project. I'm pretty sure it's justified, though there will certainly be dispute.) I also added Prosimii back into the taxobox, *but* I made to sure mark it as "defunct". Unfortunately, there are no standards or examples on how to use Template:Paraphyletic group, but from looking at the work of others, I feel this should be appropriate for a situation like Prosimii. Any thoughts? – Maky ^« talk » 17:58, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

It's logically consistent, so in the absence of an explicit standard I think it's fine. WolfmanSF (talk) 18:35, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I actually think it's better to omit "prosimians", but I agree that there's no agreed standard. In other cases, defunct groups are not given taxoboxes at all. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:00, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

That is a good point... Insectivora, Pachydermata, ... I think the key difference here is that it's still used, and as the note I added mentions, a few people still use it in a 3-way split for the order Primates. Admittedly, that use of "Prosimii" doesn't include tarsiers. Though the taxobox is helpful, I guess we could eliminate it again. Any thoughts, Wolfman (or anyone else following this)? – Maky ^« talk » 22:04, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

See also Monkey. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:11, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

With Insectivora and Pachydermata, defining the defunct taxa by listing "Included groups" and "Excluded groups" would be complicated, probably unreasonably so, which is a good reason not to have taxoboxes in those cases. Prosimians, on the other hand, is very tractable in this respect, so I think providing a taxobox makes sense. I also think it adds value. I don't see any harm in including the defunct taxon as long as it is clearly labelled as such. WolfmanSF (talk) 04:25, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I was the one who fixed the taxobox in Monkey to use that template, and that gave me the idea to add a taxobox to this article. That taxobox works well because even though "monkey" was never a taxonomic group, the template does give it taxonomic context, along with inclusions and exclusions. For this article, it's a bit more tricky, but not as bad as Insectivora and Pachydermata, as WolfmanSF pointed out. If labeling it as defunct (with the footnote to explain) is adequate, then we can just leave it. – Maky ^« talk » 07:18, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

If you go back far enough, there are taxonomic groups corresponding to monkeys – Linnaeus' genus Simia for example – but I agree that this concept was abandoned much sooner than prosimians.) The general question is what the ordinary reader is to make of different structuring of taxoboxes like the ones here and at Monkey; in particular what taxon are the "included groups" and "excluded groups" included in or excluded from? It's probably best to discuss this somewhere more general and see if there is a consensus for a standard approach to taxoboxes produced by {{Paraphyletic group}}. There doesn't seem to be much activity at WT:WikiProject Tree of Life these days, so I'm not sure if there would be a useful discussion there. Is it worth trying? Peter coxhead (talk) 09:35, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. A discussion of that template would be good, and hopefully that will create a helpful documentation page with examples for taxonomic and non-taxonomic paraphyletic groups. But where things stand now with Monkey and this article are two of the standards I will likely promote. As for where to discuss it, I would put it on WT:WikiProject Tree of Life, but direct the projects under it to the discussion.

As for Linnaeus' Simia, it technically included both monkeys and apes, making it similar to Simiiformes... except that it was suppressed in 1929. Although such a monkey-specific, paraphyletic taxonomic group *might* have been used (obscurely), I personally doubt it. People have been thinking in evolutionary grades from the beginning. Originally, people were willing to see the similarities between monkeys and apes and the similarities between apes and humans, but because people want to see humans as separate from apes (and many still hold this view), people were more willing to group monkeys and apes together, to the exclusion of humans. Therefore, going far enough back, people did not distinguish between monkeys and apes. The mindset for a long time (which still lingers today) is that primates can be broken down into humans, "simians" (monkeys and apes), and "lesser primates" ("prosimians"). The truth wasn't too far off, but the language was clearly anthropocentric and derogatory, but now is slowly being revised (again, with resistance). But fear not! We will make it out of the 18th century eventually. – Maky ^« talk » 18:08, 20 December 2014 (UTC)