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!

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Table of contents 1 Title 2 Scope 3 Parentage 4 Descendant Wikiprojects 5 Similar Wikiprojects 6 Participants 7 Structure 8 Hierarchy Definition 9 General Strategy and Discussion forum 10 Potentially Useful References 11 Template 12 Sample taxoboxes (plants) 12.1 Level: Plantae 12.2 Synonyms and common names 12.3 Text 12.4 Children 12.5 Problems 12.6 References 12.7 Level: Division 12.8 Level: Class 12.9 Level: Order 12.10 Level: Family 12.11 Level: Genus 12.12 Level: Species

Title

WikiProject Tree of Life

Scope

This WikiProject aims primarily to present the taxonomy of all living species (and maybe some extinct ones as well) in a tree structure. This is a particularly ambitious WikiProject, as there are millions of them.

Parentage

The parent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Biology[?]. The grandparent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Science[?].

Descendant Wikiprojects

No descendant WikiProjects have been defined.

Similar Wikiprojects

The similar WikiProject is the WikiProject Conservation worldwide.

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.)

See talk:Solanales for the original expression of this idea.

Structure

There is an article called Tree of life, but since that is a disambiguation page, the real root of the Tree of Life is evolutionary tree. There shall be articles for all taxa of ranks domain, kingdom, phylum or division, class, order, family, and genus. There may be articles for intermediate taxa. Articles for species are generally not needed, but may be put for salient species such as Amorphophallus titanum.

Each taxon of a rank from genus to phylum/division, inclusive, shall have the following sections:

The following struck-out text (except for problems and references) no longer applies due to discussion on Talk:Hominid. Now a table will contain taxonomic information.

• Placement: This is a list of the taxa of which this is a subtaxon.
• Synonyms and common names: If this taxon is also known by another name, such as Gramineae for Poaceae, that is noted here. Also the common name, if any (grasses, in this case).
• References: This is a list of references used in compiling the article, primarily those used for the children. If the reference is hardcopy, the date of publication shall be listed; if online, the date it was checked.
• Text: Description of the taxon including distinguishing characters, how members of the taxon are used, ecology, etc. If the scientific name is also the common name of the same organism, the entire common-name article goes here. Anything about the taxon not covered by the other sections is fair game, including pictures (see Testudines).
• Children: These are subtaxa of the taxon. If the children are anything genus or above, they are links.
• Problems: I'm not quite sure what this is for.

These, except the text, may be placed in a table (see example below), right-justified at the top of the text. In this case, a picture, if any, is placed below the common name and above the placement. If the page is about a species, the "Children" section is replaced with a Binomial name section (see Bald eagle for an example).

If a taxon has a single child, they may be on the same page with a redirect from the other. For instance, since Ginkgo is the only genus in Ginkgophyta, Ginkgophyta, Ginkgoales, and Ginkgoaceae all redirect to Ginkgo. Similarly Cuscuta is the only genus in Cuscutaceae (and the common name dodder redirects there too).

If a taxon is also the common name for the same organism, the text should go above the placement, as in Hippopotamus. If the common name covers more than the taxon, as in octopus, that shall be noted.

If a taxon is a homonym of a word that is not the name of an organism, it or the non-organism shall be distinguished. For instance, Rubiaceae has links to the genera Alberta (plant)[?] and Augusta (plant)[?] to avoid confusion with the places Alberta and Augusta.

If a taxon is a homonym of the common name of a different organism, they may be placed on the same page with a horizontal rule between them. See nasturtium for an example.

Hierarchy Definition

No classification of the Tree of Life has been defined. See this example on dividing a topic into a hierarchy.

General Strategy and Discussion forum

• /General[?]
• /Strategy[?]

Potentially Useful References

• www.itis.usda.gov (http://www.itis.usda.gov/) (often incomplete, occasional misspellings, birds are idiosyncratic)
• NCBI database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/)
• biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/angio (http://biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/angio/) (Comprehensive genus lists, flowering plants only)
• The Tree Of Life Web Project (http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html)
• Mikko's Phylogeny Archive (http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/haaramo/)
• Vertebrata (http://epp.eps.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~seicoro/bio/vertebrata.html) - Japanese language, but the structure's fine and the names are in Sciencese!)
• Biosis Index to Organism Names (http://www.biosis.org.uk/triton/indexfm.htm)
• uBio classification (http://microscope.mbl.edu/reflections/scripts/protist.php) - classifications fairly deep and up to date, generally following standard form though not always among basal groups
• Systema naturae (http://sn2000.taxonomy.nl/) - Does not always give single breakdowns for groups, which is sometimes confusing but can be very useful
• FishBase (http://www.fishbase.org/search.html?server=IFM-Kiel) - Huge database giving basic info on thousands of fish.

Template

What colors to make the HTML table backgrounds

Animalia	pink
Plantae	lightgreen
Fungi	lightblue
Protista	khaki
Bacteria	lightgrey
Archaea	darkgray

Note that darkgray is spelt with an a, while lightgrey is spelt with an e, thanks to a quirk in the HTML standard. Changing these will work on some browsers, but not all.

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Sample taxoboxes (plants)

Plants
Scientific classification
Domain: Eukaryota Kingdom: Plantae
Divisions
Nonvascular plants     Bryophyta - mosses . . Vascular plants Seedless     Psilophyta - whisk ferns . . Seeded Gymnosperms[?]     Coniferophyta - conifers . . Angiosperms    Magnoliophyta - flowering plants . .
Ref. source-abbrev page-name (http://aaa.bbb.com/dir/page.html) yyyy-mm-dd

Level: Plantae

(example from Plant)

Page contents:

Synonyms and common names

Where found.

Text

Whatever you want to say.

Children

(actually, this is pretty much covered in the taxobox; if you decide to include it, add comments to the entries.)

Problems

Here we can note deviations from what the writer has accepted as a standard. In Solanales I show two families that my source did not show as belonging here. One it placed in another order; the other was not even in its data base. (from Talk:Solanales)

References

Give long form (good for printing) of references here.

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Flowering plants
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta
Classes
Liliopsida (monocots) Magnoliopsida (dicots) . .
Ref. source-abbrev page-name (http://aaa.bbb.com/dir/page.html) yyyy-mm-dd

Level: Division

(example from Flowering_plant)

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Dicotyledons
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Magnoliopsida
Orders
Subclass Asteridae     Asterales (sunflowers) - 1 family     Callitrichales - 2 families . . Subclass Caryophyllidae     Caryophyllales - 12 families . .
Ref. source-abbrev page-name (http://aaa.bbb.com/dir/page.html) yyyy-mm-dd

Level: Class

(example from Magnoliopsida)

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Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae Subkingdom[?]: Tracheobionta Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Magnoliopsida Order: Scrophulariales
Families
Acanthaceae . .
Ref. Uni-Ham 52efam (http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/d52/52efam.htm) 2002-09-06

Level: Order

(example from Scrophulariales)

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Scrophulariaceae
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Magnoliopsida Order: Scrophulariales Family: Scrophulariaceae
Genera
Agalinis[?] Raf. -- false foxglove . . and about 200 more.
Ref. source-abbrev page-name (http://aaa.bbb.com/dir/page.html) yyyy-mm-dd

Level: Family

(example from Scrophulariaceae)

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Spiderwort
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Liliopsida Order: Commelinales Family: Commelinaceae[?] Genus: Tradescantia
Species
Tradescantia bracteata Small ex Britt. . .
Ref. source-abbrev page-name (http://aaa.bbb.com/dir/page.html) yyyy-mm-dd

Level: Genus

(example from Spiderwort)

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White ash
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Magnoliopsida Order: Scrophulariales * Family: Oleaceae Genus: Fraxinus Species: americana
Binomial nomenclature
Fraxinus americana L.
* Some botanists include the Oleaceae in the order Lamiales.

Level: Species

(example from White_ash)

This box also shows a comment on the botany; on this level the info should not be included in the text, but the taxobox needs it.