Talk:Tabanidae

Commentary for Behavioral Ecology Class

The entry is abundant in terms of the topics it covers. The images are informative, relevant, and easy to view. The tone is academic and neutral, limiting bias. The entry is does not seem to contain any original research, heavily citing references. One thing I learned that was most interesting to me was that the female must have a blood meal before she can reproduce, so the female bites animals to gain this blood (and the stings are very painful). andrewoh29 (talk) 18:53, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Reference to Literature in the Stub?

Should the reference to horseflies in literature be included in the article summary? Would a section for literature or popular culture be better? If the reference is left in the summary we should look for non Western myth or reference to include as well. Jgmac1106 (talk) 13:13, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Hyphenation

Whether the subject of the article should be hyphenated appears doubtful; compare the selection of dictionaries offering "horse-fly" with those offering "horsefly". WolfmanSF (talk) 15:12, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

I believe it should not be hyphenated. There should be a single space. In entomological common names, the convention is that if the organism is a fly (that is, it belongs to the order Diptera), then the word "fly" should be separated from the rest of the name by a space (e.g. house fly, horse fly, hover fly, etc.). If the organism is NOT a fly, then the word "fly" should be combined with the rest of the name (e.g. scorpionfly, dragonfly, damselfly, mayfly). This is how I was taught in all of my entomological courses and it is the same convention followed by bugguide.net. ArachnoGBH (talk) 21:47, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

References

Where to mention one-word spelling?

I know this article is in British English, but surely the American spelling (I think) horsefly should also be mentioned, either as a second option in the first sentence, or somewhere in the "Common names" section.

I would prefer the first option, as is often done for words that vary between varieties of English, also because it seems a little awkward to shoehorn it into "Common names", which is about other names, not other spellings.

I'd do it myself, but I'm slightly unsure whether this is really an ENGVAR difference, or just a free stylistic variation, and the wording might be a little different in the two cases. --Trovatore (talk) 02:29, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, the singular name isn't there but the plural names "horse-flies" and "horseflies" are, and I think that is sufficient. I don't think it is an ENGVAR matter, just a lack of consistency on hyphenating words across Wikipedia. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:17, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Strange - according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the spelling is horsefly, without a hyphen!!! Regards Denisarona (talk) 08:07, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't think this is an ENGVAR thing either. Usually in insect name discussions, one word is used when it isn't actually a fly, etc. like dragonfly. In this case though, we actually are talking about flies, so that's why you'll see scientists separating the words like we do with bat bug. In the US, you'll often see similar iterations like that using the term horse fly as two words. Not a huge deal, but something like horsefly or horse-fly would technically be less correct, but horsefly or horse fly gets used pretty interchangeably. Horse-fly seems to be not so common though compared to the others. KoA (talk) 17:54, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Dracula flies

We called them Dracula Flies when I was young, in Ireland. My family use this name today. Nmclough (talk) 19:02, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Hyphen?

Why the old-timey looking hyphen? Shouldn't it be "Horse fly" or "Horsefly?" Americanfreedom (talk) 16:05, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 15 March 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) ■ ∃ Madeline ⇔ ∃ Part of me ; 09:08, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

---

1. Horse-fly → Tabanidae
2. Deer fly → Chrysops
3. Chrysopsinae → Deer fly
4. Tabaninae → Horse fly

I was working on trying to fix some naming errors related to taxonomy with article titles, but this got messy with multiple articles involved in the mix-ups, so doing this as an RM instead of manually because of all the existing redirects.

This move deals with article names related to horse and deer flies.[1][2] In short, the top level article that's currently Horse-fly isn't about horseflies, but instead about the entire family Tabanidae. The family includes horse flies among other groups and is incorrect and ambiguous under WP:COMMONNAME policy and WP:FAUNA as currently titled. We'd just be following the guidance and defaulting the the official scientific name for a title like we do when there's no clear common name like lady beetle/Coccinellidae. This group is typically referred to as horseflies and deerflies among other names in sources because there are multiple distinct groups within the family like Tabaninae/horse flies or Chrysopsinae/deer flies. No one name really satisfies a singular common name at that level of the taxonomy at least, and trying to pin down a common name at that level of the hierarchy messes up names for the distinct groups that do actually claim those names further down the line.

The second move is from additional confusion because the current article on deer fly does not go to Chrysopsinae as intended, but instead a much smaller group within that, Chrysops.

The third move then puts the actual deer flies (Chrysopsinae) under the correct common name and the fourth basically does the same for horse fly/Tabaninae, though that one already has horse fly redirecting to Tabaninae, so it'd just be a swap. The first two moves are higher priority to fix inaccurate titles though, but the last two just help make things a bit more standardized. KoA (talk) 18:29, 15 March 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. No such user (talk) 13:08, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Just a note I struck the last move. Tabaninae is the primary group that is called horse flies, but some of the other sub families like Pangoniinae I forgot about can have common names that include horse fly. The horse fly common name isn't as clear of a distinct group like deer flies, so probably better to just leave that one be. It seems like the horse fly variations can just redirect to Tabanidae instead with some added natural disambiguation, but that can be handled later since the others are a bit more pressing. KoA (talk) 19:10, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 16:38, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per common name. Wikipedia titles should be what the average reader is looking for, not names which few know. Randy Kryn (talk) 22:43, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME policy is why this proposal was made. The only case here that fits your example of using the vernacular name is the third option of using deer fly as the name for the Chrysopsinae subfamily article (i.e., the deer flies), which is exactly what I proposed. Currently though, deer fly directs readers to the wrong article for a single genus Chrysops instead of the actual subfamily for deer flies, so that can't be done manually so easily. That's why moves 2 and 3 are in sequence.

As for move 1, there is no vernacular name we can keep the current horse-fly article at. The article's actual subject, the Tabanidae family, is both the horse flies and deer flies depending on which subfamily is being looked at, that's the main issue here. They are not all horse flies, and we don't name organism articles X and Y like headers for common names you'll see in field guides. We have to pick a single name that is accurate among all the other WP:CRITERIA. It's not until you get to subfamily that you can say one is a deer fly or horse fly, and that's the level where we can use those easily recognizable vernacular names, not at the family level. When we don't have a clear single vernacular name, WP:FAUNA is clear When there is no common name or no consensus can be reached on the most common name, or if it isn't clear what taxon the common name refers to, use the scientific name

Move 1 is very similar to Odonata's title structure. Most people might be familiar with them as dragonflies, but that group is both the dragonflies and damselflies, so we can't call Odonata dragonflies for an article title. It's basically the same issue here for move 1. Not doing moves 1 or 3 (and by default 2) aren't really an option because the current vernacular names are pointing to the wrong groups. The errors need to be fixed one way or another, the question is if there's a better way to do than this proposed move's setup. KoA (talk) 00:45, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support per nom. The current arrangement is misleading. This is a common situation where ambiguous vernacular names are used to try and comply with WP:COMMONNAME. It would be better to use the taxon names for the articles and then use redirects, hatnotes and disambiguation pages to deal with the variety of vernacular names. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:32, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support per nom. I know Tabanidae as "tabanids" as common vernacular for the family. I would never summarize Tabanidae as "horse flies," per reasons given in OP. Other edit proposals also seem reasonable using same logic. --Crawdaunt (talk) 19:59, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Oppose per Randy Kryn: I always known them as horse-flies and not once have I heard or seen of "Tabanidae" until today. Same with deer fly. The article itself says Apart from the common name "horse-flies". Iggy (Swan) (Contribs) 11:40, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, I took a stab at cleaning up the text so it doesn't accidentally imply that. What you personally know as horse-flies are likely Tabaninae (the horse flies) or maybe mislabeled deer flies/Chrysopsinae. If you look in the taxobar though, this article (move 1) is the Tabanidae, a higher taxonomic level than what you'd be referring to when you say horse fly.

This oppose also seems to ignore that the current name horse-fly is pointing at the wrong article and implying that all tabanids are horse flies, which violates the precision WP:CRITERIA policy The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects.. As already mentioned in the proposal, sources typically make a point of calling the Tabanidae Horse and deer flies[3], not just horse flies because not all tabanids are horse flies.

I'll be honest though that these opposes saying to do nothing and keep the titles pointing at incorrect articles can't be valid in terms of weighing WP:CONSENSUS. If somehow that standpoint was followed, we'd have to follow WP:NOTBURO policy and still do the moves anyways, which is why this RM was a formality unless even better replacements were found. At least for move 1, Tabanidae is always going to supersede an inaccurate misnaming to all the groups within like horse fly, just like if this first article was title deer fly instead. Hopefully directly spelling it out from one of the sources will spell out these are not all horse flies:[4]

There are three subfamilies in family Tabanidae:

• Chrysopsinae, the deer flies, with about 120 species in North America north of Mexico. Deer flies range from less than ¼ to about ¾ inch, so they are usually smaller than horse flies, and they often have spotted eyes and a dark-spotted pattern on the wings. Chrysops is a common genus.
• Tabaninae, the horse flies, with more than 200 species in North America north of Mexico. Horse flies can be more than 1 inch long, so they can be larger than deer flies. Also, they usually have solid or striped eyes. Tabanus is a common genus.
• Pangoniinae, a less-famous group with no common name, has about 27 species in North America north of Mexico; species in this subfamily apparently rarely, if ever, drink blood. Adults usually get their nutrients from visiting flowers. Most in this subfamily are western species, but some are found in the eastern United States, including Missouri. Stonemyia tranquilla is one species that might be found in our state.

There is not a single common name that works at the Tabanidae level, and it's not until you get to subfamily that you can use horse fly, deer fly, etc. Horse fly is a little tricker because sometimes the Pangoniinae are called the long-tongue horse flies, but as the source already says, they're more obscure and don't really have a solid common name, so you maybe could make a case for move 4 that I struck and point the horse fly common name to Tabaninae instead of Tabanidae. KoA (talk) 05:22, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

• Support per nom, as the literature itself is very clear that the family encompasses Horse, deer, and species lacking any vernacular names.--Kevmin § 17:49, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.