For anyone wondering, I'm the collection manager of a major US insect collection, and an actively publishing insect systematist. I work with several different insect orders, but focus on the Hymenoptera in particular. I am also intimately involved with efforts to create a standardized "Official" registry of zoological scientific names, and expect I may ultimately get involved in formal collaboration with Wikipedia.

Archive1 Archive2 Archive3 Archive4 Archive5 Archive6 Archive7 Archive8 Archive9

Hi Dyanega,

You have added to the Caucasian honey bee page the below info.

"...and ranges to the Tien Shan Mountains in Central Asia. where it was believed to represent a new subspecies ("pomonella"^[1]), a claim which has not been supported.^[2]"

But from re-reviewing the source you have cited for the phrase "a claim (A. m. pomonella is a new subspecies) which has not been supported", the "A revision of subspecies structure of western honey bee Apis mellifera" source article only lists A. m. pomonella as a subspecies in Table 1., and lists the A. m. caucasia as a subspecies in Table 1. and then only in a paragraph 5 of section 3, discussing its lineage, with neither referencing each other, nor raising doubt over A. m. pomonella taxon status as a subspecies:

Also after looking at the sources and sentence structure for your sentence "and ranges to the Tien Shan Mountains in Central Asia" I realize there is no source cited (the source beside the word "pomonella" is to support the claim its a new subspecies, not relating to its range).

Can you explain why you made these edits without a source and claims that are not supported but contradicted by the cited sources? I'm guessing I've missed something, maybe you are aware of more recent DNA analysis but you have given the wrong sources?

Apologies if I've made a mistake and thank you for your help. Bibby (talk) 12:52, 19 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi there,

hope you can help me here; from going through Engel's list of A. mellifera subspecies, the A. m. meda is listed with the text;

“17. Apis mellifera meda Skorikov: The Median Honey Bee Distribution.—This race is most common in Iran and Iraq but does range into south- eastern Turkey and northern Syria.”

BUT when I search for it on the ICZN list I cannot find it, not even as a synonym, etc. So, IF my understanding is correct, we should remove A. m. meda from the subspecies list, and I'll create a wiki page for it, but treat it in the same way as Bombus incognitus.

But I'm afraid I've missed something, or have made a mistake? Bibby (talk) 13:52, 21 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I've just noticed I can't find Apis mellifera mellifera either, so I must be missing something, these are the two web pages I've looked through.

https://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?search=Apis+mellifera

https://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20o?act=x_checklist&guide=Apoidea_species

Bibby (talk) 00:14, 22 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi

have you received any feedback from the other Commissioners of the ICZN about the A. m. meda? I was wanting to create a page for it, but should I treat it as a recognized subspecies or not? Bibby (talk) 11:47, 2 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi

I have just now gone ahead and created/published a page for the Apis mellifera meda honey bee, I am assuming it is Ok, even though it is not listed on the ICZN's list of Apis mellifera subspecies? Should I mention this on the page? Or just leave it and wait for the ICZN's list to be updated, assuming Engel's list is correct? Thanks anyway for your help. Bibby (talk) 12:22, 7 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Engel's is the most recent authoritative work, and aside from names published after 1999, should be considered reliable. I don't know why the ITIS list doesn't include it. Dyanega (talk) 15:59, 7 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Colony collapse disorder has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:28, 21 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

just a small thing for your info. your link for the International Bee Research Association (IBRA) on your website is dead, it should be https://ibra.org.uk/ Bibby (talk) 12:08, 23 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks. Update is done. Dyanega (talk) 16:10, 2 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Please look at Wikipedia:Vandalism to see what vandalism actually is. Good faith edits are not vandalism. I have a hard time believing that "long penis" is an actual species of moth. I suggest to provide better proof and sources to the page if it is an actual moth. Master106 (talk) 20:15, 15 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Master106:, "pennis" (with 2 n's) means wing or feather. There are about 100 articles on Wikipedia for species with the epithet longipennis, and many more longipennis species without their own articles are mentioned in genus articles. Plantdrew (talk) 22:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi, when you moved the subject page from Phloeodes plicatus, you had noted that the (genus) name was changed in 2006. Currently, all the refs in the taxonbar (BioLib, BOLD, BugGuide, EoL, GBIF, ITIS NCBI) point to Phloeodes plicatus. I have access to García-París et al. (2006), where the species was transferred, but is there a more up-to-date reference for the accepted genus placement of this species? Loopy30 (talk) 00:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi. I had not seen any, but I tracked it down: the placement by García-París et al didn't last two years before it was almost summarily reversed, so it was my fault for not digging a little deeper. A number of species names and generic placements were changed in 2008, in this paper: [1] and it will take a bit of work to accommodate this, unfortunately. I can't find anything more recent, so the 2008 paper does appear to be the status quo. I'm glad you prompted me to check, and apologize again for confusing the issue. Dyanega (talk) 15:03, 3 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I must have visited Valid name (zoology) at least once before (I did add a WikiProject banner to the talk page), and I've probably visited it several times, but I guess I never paid any attention to the content. It's awful (especially the lead). Are you interested in making it not complete nonsense? I intend to investigate links to Valid name (botany); I don't see any reason why redirects to Validly published name in the context of botany should be linked to anything other than that title. Plantdrew (talk) 02:48, 13 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Why did you remove my addition in Latrodectus and Latrodectus hesperus! The species is the one O claimed it to be and not a misidentified species as you claim. You have no justification but your own judgement. Please revert your edition! Rodolfosalinas (talk) 23:30, 24 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I had proposed Notogramma cimiciforme and Notogramma cimiciformis be merged several months ago, but wasn't sure which spelling to use. They've now been merged. What spelling should be used? Plantdrew (talk) 01:49, 26 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

All genera ending in "-gramma" are grammatically neuter by default; a coining author would have had to explicitly state their new genus name was feminine in order to override the default. I see that the only other adjectival species in the list is "purpuratum", which is neuter, so it would appear that cimiciforme is the correct spelling. Thanks for checking! Dyanega (talk) 14:23, 26 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I found a copy of Loew's original creation of the genus. He included one species, and named it "cimiciformis" - under the Code, this is considered evidence that the genus was NOT intended to be neuter. As such, it turns out that the species named "purpuratum" should be purpurata instead. This is the kind of thing that should be considered acceptable in Wikipedia, but I have occasionally encountered resistance with such edits, and complaints that it constitutes "original research". I will point out, for the record, that while under most circumstances I would agree, changing spelling for gender agreement purposes in zoology does NOT have to be published, or cited, ever. It is treated as mandatory and automatic, so there will virtually never be a source that you can cite, either for the gender of a genus, or for the spelling of an epithet. This case is a good example of precisely this problem: Loew did not explicitly say "My new genus is feminine", but he combined the genus with a species name that was not neuter, so the rules of the Code determine that it is feminine. It is not, strictly speaking, fair to say that this is original research, any more than looking in a dictionary for the definition of a word would be considered original research. Anyone reading the Code would arrive at the same conclusion, objectively determined, just as anyone reading any dictionary will find the same definition for a given word. I expect that editors rarely cite a dictionary in Wikipedia, even in cases where one was clearly consulted, and they certainly aren't accused of doing original research. Dyanega (talk) 14:44, 26 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I checked Cole 1923, and he actually originally spelled the name as "purpurata" here. Looks like this genus goes counter to the default rule, for sure. Dyanega (talk) 14:52, 26 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sorry to butt in, but what you're saying here sounds a bit different from what you told me when I brought up the case of Sybistroma to you back in 2021 (link to discussion). In that you said that "any genus name or suffix that is definitively Greek in origin and has a definite gender in Greek takes that nomenclatural gender, regardless of the treatment by the original author or any subsequent authors". So the conclusion was that Sybistroma is neuter because of the neuter "-stroma" ending, regardless of how it was originally used (Meigen originally included in it "Sybistroma nodicornis" for instance). I also mentioned the case of Syntormon there, which as it happens is another genus created by Loew, and is either masculine or neuter depending on who you ask (Loew treated it as masculine, but it has the Greek neuter ending "-on"). But you're saying now Notogramma is feminine because Loew treated it as such, even though it has a neuter ending "-gramma" and Loew didn't actually explicitly say he was treating it as feminine? Monster Iestyn (talk) 18:19, 27 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Dyanega, you might be thinking of a discussion (somewhere, I don't remember exactly where), that you and I (and others) participated in, where I was concerned about correcting a misspelling where the demonstrably correct spelling (per the provisions of the ICZN code) had absolutely no presence on the internet (and probably not in print). I wouldn't say that correcting the spelling in that situation is exactly "original research", but I do remain concerned about Wikipedia introducing a spelling that appears nowhere outside of Wikipedia; it might not "stick". I.e., other editors might return it to the spelling that is attested outside of Wikipedia (in general, I'm suspicious of Wikipedia only spellings; I've encountered quite a few that were clearly mistakes that originated on Wikipedia). It's a different situation when multiple spellings exist outside of Wikipedia. Plantdrew (talk) 04:29, 28 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I see the source of the confusion: these other words have a single derivation, but "-gramma" could be a Latinized version of the Greek ending "-gramme", which is feminine. In the absence of an etymology, it's not possible to tell whether an author meant the neuter word or the feminine word, which is why they're all neuter by default. The cases I cited before have no such ambiguity, because the dictionary has a single derivation and a single gender. Dyanega (talk) 18:42, 27 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Ah, sorry then, I was not aware names ending in "-gramma" might be problematic in that way. Monster Iestyn (talk) 19:24, 27 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

If it helps at all though, George C. Steyskal wrote an article reviewing the genus Notogramma in 1963 ([2]) and in his view the generic name was "obviously a Greek compound of neuter gender". Reading his obituary, he was stated to have knowledge of Latin and Greek, so he probably knew what he was talking about here (but it would have been nice to have the original Greek in the text to double check). Monster Iestyn (talk) 23:37, 27 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It's a mess because Greek has both "gramma" (neuter - see [3]) and "gramme" (feminine - see [4]). Since the latter term means almost the exact same thing, and latinizes to "gramma", dipterists have argued, sometimes quite vehemently, that taxonomists USUALLY intend this, and not the Latin word at all. The only thing that can possibly constitute evidence that an author intended the feminine Greek noun (other than an explicit statement) is treating it as feminine when combining. Personally, I don't much care for this, and I'm not really certain the Code allows it, but it is a source of contention. Dyanega (talk) 23:49, 27 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

To make matters more confusing, I discussed this case with other Commissioners, as it seems to be a fairly unusual situation where there are multiple dictionary meanings for a word, and they are of different gender - the Code does not actually give a specific course of action to be followed here. The general feeling is that if we were to draft a rule to cover the contingency, it would probably use the original author's combination as evidence, but others pointed out that just because that specific case isn't covered doesn't mean the present rules don't adequately allow for it. VERY strictly speaking, then, in the case of Notogramma then Article 30.1.1, saying that a word or suffix that exists in a Latin lexicon takes the gender found there, is the one that can be said to apply because the statement is true (so think of it as a flow chart). The argument against this is that this same ending can also be transliterated Greek, which is governed by Article 30.1.2, and the outcome of that rule is neuter. The same word can ALSO be Greek with a latinized ending, in which case it would be feminine under Article 30.1.3! If you read the Code like a flow chart, then you accept the first Article that applies, but whether this is appropriate is questionable. The Commissioners do not entirely agree how to treat this case. Under these circumstances, the consensus was that if the gender in the majority of recent works is neuter, to keep it neuter. This goes counter to my recommendation above. Basically, it's a mess with no absolutely clear-cut resolution. Dyanega (talk) 14:51, 28 April 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

While daggers are a valuable symbol in articles that discuss both extant and extinct taxa, they are purely redundant in articles on fully extinct groups as the prose of the article will already have covered that they are extinct. Please stop over-daggering extinct taxa articles.--Kevmin § 18:58, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi. It's not dagger-spamming, it's fixing the formatting of the various articles because they are inconsistent. Some of the articles on fossil taxa have daggers, others don't, and even within articles, some genus names are given daggers, and others aren't. It's INCONSISTENT, and that's misleading. I hope you'll reconsider. Dyanega (talk) 19:01, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Misleading in what manner to a general audience readership? You state that this is a fix of formatting, but its not something covered anywhere in the Wp:MOS. Would you look at a journals inhouse MOS requirements when your submitting to them and say I like my way better, so I will ignore there MOS? You also need to keep in mind that as these articles are to be written for a general readership, unless the first instance of a † is explanted or included via the ((extinct)) template, the readers will likely have NO idea what is even being meant. Yes there ideally should be consistency, but as dive by editing happens daily this is a hard thing to maintain. Also the stance I suggested is the one used in by the largest group of Feature articles on extinct taxa, namely dinosaurs. A look at Theropod vers Therizinosauria show that dagger use is maintained in the article prose on Theropod specifically as the subtaxa list includes both extinct and extant members, with the dagger being explained, while at Therizinosauria no daggers are used, as the whole of the group is extinct and that is covered in the very first sentence of the lede.--Kevmin § 19:14, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I see that you edited the Pseudopolycentropodidae article so instead of having a mix of daggered and un-daggered names, they are all un-daggered now. That was precisely the kind of misleading inconsistency that could lead readers to think that they were (in some cases) looking at extant taxa. I can see your point about having a mixture of extant and extinct taxa, and I can concede that as long as the article makes it clear that everything displayed is extinct, there is no obvious source of confusion. That being said, then, let me ask you if you would concede that my adding the dagger annotation for the categories is actually appropriate, for exactly that same reason? That is, if one goes to "Category:Mecoptera" isn't it helpful for readers to know at a glance which of those taxa are extant and which are extinct? Adding the dagger to the category draws that distinction, and I would argue that it is an improvement over a mixed category. Dyanega (talk) 21:46, 11 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I fully agree that the category sorting is valuable and I tried to keep it where I saw you had also implemented it on the pages I have watchlisted. If I removed the sorting from any of those pages I will go back through and readd them.--Kevmin § 13:07, 12 June 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I've reverted your edit on this as I don't seen why my edit was reverted. I didn't remove or change any information that was already there, I added information that might have been useful to some readers. It was unsourced, but I don't think that's a reason to revert: I often see 'cite' requests next to unsourced information in Wikipedia articles. If you prefer a different pronunciation, please add it as an alternative. If you know of a source for the pronunciation of specific binomial terms in biology, I'd be interested in looking at it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sdoerr (talk • contribs) 16:05, 19 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

That's not how Wikipedia works. You must provide a source for material you add, or the edit gets deleted. Please read WP:RS, and please adhere to that policy. I'll happily bring the matter to some admins if you feel inclined to dispute this policy. As an aside, there are no definitive sources for the pronunciation of scientific binomial names, because while they are based upon Latin, they are not actually pronounced as if they were Latin. You can ask 30 scientists to pronounce a name, and get 5 or 6 different answers. No particular answer is "right" or "wrong" - which is all the more reason not to arbitrarily add "pronunciation" to any Wikipedia articles containing scientific names. Thanks. Dyanega (talk) 16:19, 19 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

That's not my understanding after reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Citation_needed#When_not_to_use_this_template. That makes clear that you should only remove unsourced information if it concerns living persons. Otherwise you should simply add the Citation_needed tag. It specifically says: 'Except for contentious claims about living people, which should be immediately removed if not cited, there is no specific deadline for providing citations. Please do not delete information that you believe is correct solely because no one has provided a citation within an arbitrary time limit. If there is some uncertainty about its accuracy, most editors are willing to wait at least a month to see whether a citation can be provided.' Sdoerr (talk) 19:17, 19 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I see you've modified the pronunciation. Unfortunately, you don't indicate the stress in the second word. One problem is that we are not dealing with the word scabies in its nominative form, which is three syllables in Latin and stressed on the first syllable. Scabiei is the genitive case, and the e is long (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scabiei), so the stress pattern in Latin is sca.bi.e′.i. That gives the initial syllable sca secondary stress rather than primary stress, which is why I went for a short a. (WP's article seems to agree in section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciation_of_Latin#Short_vowels point 4, though I would not have been so dogmatic myself.) Whether the i would still be elided with the following stressed e is also debatable: we don't elide them in 'medieval', for instance. Sdoerr (talk) 08:34, 20 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

And this, you see, is why so few articles in Wikipedia give pronunciations of Latin words: because different sources give different answers. The Wikipedia entry you used initially as a source made it clear that "rabies" (and by extension, scabies) has two syllables, and explained exactly why. Yet, Wiktionary evidently says "rabies" has three syllables ([5]). Accordingly, there are two sources in direct conflict. I see now that the Wikipedia entry for scabies also gives a two-syllable pronunciation, using the same vowel sounds I independently derived from the Wikipedia entry on Latin pronunciation. The pronunciation citation given there is a third source, and not a crowdsourced wiki. Two out of three sources therefore indicate the "i" is a silent semivowel, and not at all like the "i" in "medieval". In a nutshell, there are sources clearly suggesting that the name "scabiei" should be pronounced much the same as the word "radii" - the same number of syllables, and the same vowel sounds. Again, that you located a source that says otherwise only highlights the problem with giving pronunciations in the first place. I will note, as well, that Wiktionary - which I make extensive use of literally every single day at work to look up Latin terms (which I also use every single day) - is demonstrably prone to errors, and because of the small number of contributors, and the extreme complexity of their templates and sourcing guidelines, errors there are vastly less likely to be fixed than errors in Wikipedia. I can point to dozens of clear errors there like "alternative" adjectival forms that appear without citations, or are admitted to be neologisms (a good trick for a "dead" language), or whether a word is a noun or an adjective, and I have never until today even bothered to concern myself with how Wiktionary suggested that things be pronounced. That it indicates that "rabies" has three syllables is all the more reason for me not to ever use Wiktionary as a reliable guide for pronunciation. In just a quick check, the very first scientific name I looked at - the way to pronounce the "cc" in the name "Coccinella" - the Wikipedia pronunciation guide says it's pronounced like in "successor", a "ks" phoneme, but Wiktionary says ([6]) it's either a "t" sound followed by a "ts" sound, or a double "k" sound, and neither is how people pronounce that name, which I've heard spoken by dozens and dozens of different people over several decades, not all of them native English speakers. They ALWAYS pronounce that phoneme the same way as in "successor" - i.e., suksessor, and koksinella. The Wiktionary entries appear to be using archaic pronunciation guidelines, rather than the guidelines in the Wikipedia article you cited, which very closely align to actual modern usage, and modern usage is what Wikipedia should be presenting to readers. I would accordingly argue strongly against using Wiktionary's guidelines at all for scientific names. Dyanega (talk) 15:35, 20 July 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Could you reinstate my edit to Buprestidae, as I think it is correct. See its talk page for support. MightyWarrior (talk) 18:37, 27 August 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Under Delta (wasp) you put "Undid revision 1174504230 by Sjl197 (talk); gracilior is not a valid taxon; has been synonymized under c. campaniforme - be careful not to use outdated source material". Is there a particular source/sources that publish that, and better yet detail it? If so, could you please direct me to those. The name is used in Srinivasan & Girish Kumar 2010 JoTT: 2(12): 1313-1322 as (miswritten) "Delta companiforme gracilior (Giordani Soika, 1986)" which is only matching an observation to that supposed name, so i was wary about its status. All this relates to a couple of observations on iNaturalist, if to add the name "gracilior" there or not, and here i followed user request who noted "gracilior" was not given in Gawas et al. 2020 checklist of India, but didn't know why absent - and neither do I. In general, I fear for future of many wiki pages where I anticipate other cases like this will become common, i.e. synonymised/moved/invalidated taxa will keep being added back by people like myself who are comparatively experienced in particular taxa. Thanks for the catch and i'll keep trying to be cautious. Sjl197 (talk) 10:11, 9 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for reply on my page - seen and appreciated. Thanks. Sjl197 (talk) 07:31, 10 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello, I came across this edit. Do you have examples of the abbreviation "L." being used in zoology? Thanks, Korg (talk) 21:05, 29 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It's hard to find in online catalogs and checklists, which spell author names out in full, but trivially easy to find in the print literature. Just the first example to hand, a paper I was looking at yesterday: [7]. Just pick a Linnaean animal name, google it, and you should see plenty of examples using the abbreviation. Dyanega (talk) 14:41, 30 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

As an aside, in zoology there are only two authors who are given single-letter abbreviations: Linnaeus and Fabricius. Dyanega (talk) 14:43, 30 October 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

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You just did some ref work at Vulture bee, which is great. However, you marked these edits as minor. Please note that adding citations is never a minor edit. For details, please see Help:Minor, especially Help:Minor § What not to mark as minor changes. Keep on truckin' Paradoctor (talk) 22:40, 30 December 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The article Glamis, California has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Quite a grandiose (and poorly-sourced) article for a place that appears to be nothing more than a store and an RV storage lot surrounded by miles and miles of desert, in satellite images. Cited sources are insufficient for notability; no mention in Farr's history of Imperial County [8] makes it unlikely that this was a notable place. Certainly not a populated place. Fails WP:GEOLAND and WP:GNG.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the ((proposed deletion/dated)) notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing ((proposed deletion/dated)) will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 00:48, 13 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]