WikiProject Fishes aims to help organise our rapidly growing collection of articles about fishtaxa. Issues outside the scope of this WikiProject include fishkeeping (fish aquarium topics), fishing, fisheries, fish cuisine topics, fish farm topics, fish market topics, fish processing topics, fish product sales topics, fish products topics, and fish trap topics.
At the end of October 2021, there were 33,888 articles within the project's scope. During October 2021, the most popular 500 articles received 7,931,480 views, averaging 255,854 views per day.
HolyCrocsEmperor Hiii I just created articles for most grayling species and now start working on other freshwater species in Russia and East Asia! Have a good day!
TheOrangeOctopus Hello! I love marine biology, and although my passion is cephalopods, I would like to help edit fish pages!
KokiHaps (talk·contribs) I am active in the German Wikipedia section as well as in Wikispecies under the Username 'Haps' (which is in other Wikipedia languages unfortunately occupied by other users)
MChGilbert (talk·contribs) Fish biologist/anatomist studying a variety of fish taxa, from pupfishes to cichlids to bramids. Editing when I have the time.
Pbsouthwood (talk·contribs) Sporadic editor on marine organisms of Southern Africa, including fishes.
Palaxzorodice (talk·contribs) Betta fish lover, mostly contribute on Betta-related articles, aim to improve Betta articles to be good or featured articles.
Philip Mark Green (talk ·contribs) Passionate about Zambian fish and would like to start contributing.
Ryan shell (talk·contribs) (ive created 12 articles for this project, but i just realised i didnot sign the project page)
Sablegsd (talk·contribs) I am passionate about Hydrocynus and take an intense personal interest in that genus and the five species contained therein. As of the time of this writing, I own two species.
TheLastClassicist1750 (talk·contribs) I am interested in all fish, and I hope to help out here mostly through copy-editing and other small contributions.
If a family has only a single genus, the family name should redirect to the article on the genus (e.g., Elassomatidae). If a genus has only a single species, the generic name should redirect to the species (e.g., Centrarchus).
When a genus contains only a small number of similar species, the articles may be combined with the article on the genus (e.g., Crappie, which includes the white crappie, Pomoxis annularis, and the black crappie, P. nigromaculatus.)
Common names should be written in sentence case rather than title case, following normal English usage and that of FishBase. Use, for example, "largemouth bass", not "Largemouth Bass". Place names or personal names that form part of a common name remain capitalized, hence "Guadalupe bass" (in reference to the Guadalupe River) or "White Cloud Mountain minnow" (in reference to White Cloud Mountain in China).
Systematic names
Use systematic or "scientific" names according to established biological usage.
Capitalize but do not italicize names of taxa higher than genus, e.g., the family Exocoetidae.
Capitalize and italicize generic names, e.g., Xiphophorus.
Use the common name for any species that satisfies at least one of the following criteria:
1(i) The species has a single common name that is widely used and never used for any other species. While the species in question may have additional common names, those names are rarely used. Example: Greenland halibut.
1(ii) The species has a widely recognised common name that is so rarely applied to other species that confusion as to the subject of the article is unlikely to arise. Example: Guppy.
1(iii) Within the area where the species is endemic and/or of commercial importance, only a single common name is used by the relevant legal, conservation, fisheries or local institutions, even though other common names may exist. Example: Atlantic salmon.
1(iv) The species has a common name that is normally separated from similar common names by use of geographical, descriptive, or other modifications to those names. Once differentiated, these names satisfy criteria i, ii, or iii above. Examples: Shovelnose sturgeon, Little shovelnose sturgeon, False shovelnose sturgeon.
Use the Latin name for any species that fails to satisfy criteria 1(i) to 1(iv), including such situations as the following:
2(i) The same common name is regularly applied to multiple species. Example: Green spotted puffer.
2(iii) The species has different common names in different English-speaking countries. Example: Plec (UK), pleco (US).
2(iv) The species simply has no widely used common name. Example: Dermogenys sumatrana.
Guidelines
Regardless of the title used, articles should include the scientific name in bold and italics and all significant English common names in bold in the first paragraph (and preferably the first sentence).
The first paragraph should differentiate the fish from other species with which it might be confused. This may be done by explaining the ambiguity, with links to other fish (e.g., at tilapia), or by mentioning geographical distribution, for example:
The guppy (Poecilia reticulata), also known as the millionsfish, is a small fresh and brackish water fish from Central America.
This article is about the <put text>; for the <put text> see <put link>.
Create a disambiguation page when the ambiguity involves many fish and a hatnote would be too long. Example: Tigerfish.
Before renaming articles, discuss the reasons for doing so on the Talk page. In cases of disputed naming, where a consensus cannot be reached on the article's Talk page, the matter should be discussed at WikiProject Fishes to allow a consensus decision to be reached.
Regional lists of species
Lists of fish species should follow the form: List of fishes of <Region>. The definite article may be needed for the name of some regions. Note that "List of fish of ..." is incorrect when dealing with a list of the species.
Higher taxa
Articles on taxa above species should be titled using the common name, if one exists and is unambiguous. Otherwise, the scientific epithet should be used. When FishBase or other references give a common name of "xes and ys" or "xes or ys" for a higher taxon, the scientific epithet (possibly anglicized) should be used for the article title.
Articles on taxa above the generic level should be titled with the Latin form of the name and not the anglicization, e.g. Cyprinidae not cyprinid, and Perciformes not perciform. The anglicizations may be freely used in article text however.
Taxonomy at the level of genera and species should follow FishBase. Higher-level classification should follow the 2016 fifth edition of Fishes of the World by J.S. Nelson, T.C. Grande and M.V.H. Wilson for consistency. If applicable, disputes in classification should be noted in article text.
Note: When listing the species authority (the author(s) who originally named the species or subspecies of interest), in the taxobox or elsewhere, parentheses matter. For example, "Foogenus fishii Smith, 1900" has a subtly different meaning than "Foogenus fishii (Smith, 1900)". Parentheses indicate that Smith originally placed fishii in a different genus, and the species was subsequently placed in Foogenus. See more at Binomial nomenclature and Template:Taxobox#Authorities (Animalia usage).
Wikipedia categories should be created for well-known families, using the plural of the common name of the family (Category:Centrarchidae or Category:Cyprinidae), and for orders, using the common name (e.g., Category:Catfishes) or the scientific epithet (e.g., Category:Cyprinodontiformes). For very small families (e.g., the pygmy sunfishes), only the order category may be used, but usage must be consistent among members of a family.
All articles on taxa should have taxoboxes (constructed using the taxobox template, not built from scratch) including kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. The new taxa above class should not be indicated, since they can be found elsewhere in Wikipedia. Taxa between class and order should not be used, since they are unstable and can be found in the class and order articles. For large taxa, intermediate classifications may be indicated in the taxobox. For example, Perciformes should indicate their suborder and (if one exists) superfamily, and members of large families should indicate subfamilies. All members of a taxon should, however, be consistent in the usage of intermediate classifications.
An example taxobox, for the warmouth (Lepomis gulosus), is given at right. Note that the specific name is L. gulosus, not simply gulosus, and that the generic name is not bolded, since the article is not about the entire genus Lepomis.
Images
An image should be included in the taxobox if an appropriate one is available.
Higher taxa should use images reflecting their types, if possible. For example, Lepomis uses an image of L. auritus, the redbreast sunfish, which is the type species of the genus, while Centrarchidae uses an image of Centrarchus macropterus, the flier, which is the type (and only) species of Centrarchus, the type genus of Centrarchidae.
The taxobox image should ideally picture a single fish, facing left, in a horizontal orientation, cropped to 20 percent of the fish's length around the fish's body, and should be 250 pixels wide. (The image should not be resized manually; the full-size image should be uploaded and markup used to create the 250px image. Note that very large images may be resized before upload so that they will fit in a normal browser window when enlarged.) For articles long enough to warrant inclusion of additional images, these may be placed as thumbnails in the article body, ideally showing the fish in its native environment.
Note that images of fishes which do not possess right-left symmetry should not be flipped to obtain a left-facing fish; doing so would, for example, convert a righteye flounder into a lefteye flounder.
Text captions should not be used on taxobox images in species articles, but in articles on higher taxa, the article caption should indicate the species pictured (if known), in the format "[[Common name]] (''Genus species'')". If the species depicted is not known, the caption should identify the fish as closely as possible, as in "Pygmy sunfish (Elassoma sp.)"
It is always beneficial to have a picture that communicates a sense of scale. This can be achieved by
placing standard sized physical objects next to the fish (human hand or body, tape measure, etc.), before taking the photo. Sometimes the background scenery will already do the job.
painting a measuring scale into an existing image, if you know its exact scale (that's not the same as knowing the average size of the species, btw).
painting a reference shape (human silhouette, etc.) into the picture, if your idea about the scale is less accurate.
painting a measuring scale is highly unscientific if it is based on nothing but a guess. In this case you should use the image as it is!
Anyway, any image is better than no image - esp. if you have only third party material available, or if you don't want to get the animal out of its living environment.
Introduction
The first paragraph should give the common and systematic names of the taxon featured in the article, as well as some information about its classification. Species articles should follow the form:
Barus is a genus of freshwaterfish in the bazfamily (family Bazidae) of order Quuxiformes. The type species is the common barfish (B. vulgaris), and fishes of this genus are known as the barfishes.
Succeeding paragraphs should give, in order (omitting paragraphs for which no information is available):
Taxonomy (includes classification, evolution, subspecies, etymology of name (especially for genus names, which FishBase normally provides), alternate common names, important binomial synonyms, etc.
Description, including size, weight, and age data from FishBase
Distribution and habitat
Feeding, diet, and related information
Reproduction (life-cycle, breeding, etc.)
Importance to humans (aquarium fish, game fish, commercial fishing, research uses, etc.)
Conservation status (if not Secure) for species, including explanation for the classification, and mention of members classified as Vulnerable or worse for higher taxa
Trivia (state fish, national emblem, ships bearing the name, other uses of the name, etc.)
Other sections
Information on keeping fish in an aquarium should be put in a section entitled "In the aquarium". Breeding and dietary information pertaining to captive fish should go here, rather than in the main section, which should refer primarily to the fish in its natural habitat.
Other sections may address topics of interest warranting discussion longer than a brief paragraph.
References
Every article should include a section entitled "References", with a bullet-list of sources. Every article should include a citation there of the relevant entries in FishBase and, if possible, ITIS. It is not necessary to include Fishes of the World unless it has been used as a source for the article. Other sources for information in the article should be included, following normal citation format.
Templates exist for citing FishBase and ITIS, and these should be used.
FishBase
For a FishBase entry on an order, use:
((FishBase order | order = Bariformes | year = YYYY | month = Month))
For a FishBase entry on a family, use:
((FishBase family | family = Baridae | year = YYYY | month = Month))
For a FishBase entry on a genus, use:
((FishBase genus | genus = Barus | year = YYYY | month = Month))
For most FishBase entries on species, use:
((FishBase species | genus = Barus | species = foous | year = YYYY | month = Month))
For most FishBase entries on subspecies, use:
((FishBase subspecies | genus = Barus | species = foous | subspecies = subfoous | year = YYYY | month = Month))
For FishBase entries that are problematic for the above templates, get the numeric ID from their URL and use:
((FishBase species alt | ID = ???? | taxon = Barus foous foous | year = YYYY | month = Month))
For all FishBase templates, year and month refer to the FishBase revision consulted, not the date on which you consulted FishBase; the revision can be found from the FishBase home page.
ITIS
For an ITIS entry, use:
((ITIS | ID = ????? | taxon = ''Barus foous'' | year = YYYY | date = DD Month))
For the ITIS template, year and date refer to the date on which ITIS was consulted. Date can be in either U.S. or international format, as it will be wikified.
External links
Web sites or pages not used as sources for the article (except for FishBase and ITIS) should appear in a section entitled "External links" (using the plural even if only one link is present).
WikiProject Fishes' project banner is ((Fishproject)). Please place at the top of an appropriate talk page. Placing the template on the talk page will help to direct editors to this WikiProject Fishes main page. This is how the template will look when it has been added:
This article is part of WikiProject Fishes, an attempt to organise a detailed guide to all topics related to Fish taxa. To participate, you can edit the attached article, or contribute further at WikiProject Fishes. This project is an offshoot of the WikiProject Tree of Life.FishesWikipedia:WikiProject FishesTemplate:WikiProject FishesFishes articles
This article has been rated as NA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Stub templates
Remember to mark up stub articles with the appropriate stub template at the bottom of the article. This automatically adds it to the appropriate page and inserts the banners to the bottom of the page. These are the current stub templates:
* Stub templates with very few articles are often upmerged into a parent category. To propose a separate category, please visit Wikipedia:WSS/P.
Categories
Please make sure to add articles to the appropriate categories among the ones listed on Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes/Categories. If there are any categories that you think should be created, please request them in the tasklist on this page or on the talk page.
I originally nominated the article for deletion as original research. There seems to be some confusion with this article about whether it represents a distinct species and whether it's actually been scientifically described. It's been improved, but it'd be great if an expert would comment on the AfD, improve the article, or otherwise help us figure this one out. Graymornings(talk) 11:30, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Automated list of featured and good articles[edit]
This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk·contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. ((WikiProject Fishes))) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.