User talk:Philcha/Archives/2011/June

Talk:Bucket bong/GA1

Thank you so much again for reviewing this article and helping me improve it so much. I have responded to all of your comments. CrowzRSA 19:07, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Tribe (zoology)

I discussed the issue with Hallan (the author of the source you cite) a few years ago over email. He explained that he just copied the tribes from Roewer's spider catalog from the 1950s. Current salticid taxonomy uses unranked clades for everything between subfamily and genus. I haven't seen tribes used in any non-catalog sources from the past 2 decades. My plan is that after the tribes are removed, I'll go through and add the unranked clades that reflect the current taxonomy. Kaldari (talk) 23:17, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

BTW, if you want to see a fairly up to date phylogeny of the Salticidae family, I have an archaeopteryx visualization set up at http://www.angelblade.com/salticidae/phylogeny2.html. Most of Hallan's tribes don't agree with this tree (since they are based on strictly morphological comparisons from the pre-genetics era). Kaldari (talk) 23:23, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

In case you're interested, the definitive catalog for spiders is currently Dr. Platnick's World Spider Catalog. He updates it twice a year and it's generally considered the bibliographical "bible" for arachnologists. As you can see, he doesn't even use sub-families since those are mostly outdated as well. As cladistic systematics gradually replaces Linnaean taxonomy, the traditional taxons will eventually disappear from use. Many researchers are even calling for the use of genera and species to be abandoned (at least in the entomological world), but I'm sure that won't happen any time soon. Unfortunately, I think convincing Wikipedia editors to stop using Linnaean taxonomy (no matter how outdated it is) is going to be an uphill battle since Linnaean taxonomy is much easier to translate into infoboxes :) Kaldari (talk) 23:44, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for "since Linnaean taxonomy is much easier to translate into infoboxes", that's made me awake up (I'm a Brit, so it's now - see my sig).

More seriously, I use Platnick & cos.' database in jumping spider articles, and that also omits sub-families. I don't know about non-salticids, but sub-family Spartaeinae is all over the sources about genus Portia, although Platnick etc. omits that sub-family. Some points about Spartaeinae: they are one of the few sub-families in which the middle pair of secondary eyes are big enough to be functional; most have relatively poor eyesight, except that Portias are among the best; Jackson with various colleagues suggest Spartaeinae may be "primitive" in the cladistic sense of relatively "basal" - Jackson etc. suggest in various places that Spartaeinae's morphology may evidence that jumping spiders evolved from web-builders that acquired good eyesight, and looked what happened then!

So Platnick etc. does not give the whole story. I'm working bottom-up up, as I found when researching jumping spiders that I was overwhelmed with sources at that level of the tree. While I've not seen the tribe Spartaeini (yet), I'd prefer to keep the option as a foothill in Mount Salticidae.

PS I like cladistics, see e.g. Phoronid. I saw in one the Jackson etc. articles a proto-cladogram, with under-developed topology. Do you know of a better one? --Philcha (talk) 06:44, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

The Organelle Genome Database: Taxonomy goes down to sub-tribe, and the web site appears to be molecular phylogeny! I know we both like jumping spiders, but I bet the sub-sub-subs are most needed in labelling cladograms for unicellular organisms. --Philcha (talk) 18:56, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

On the issue of subfamilies and tribes within Salticidae specifically, many of them were originally set up by Eugene Simon about a hundred years ago. Some of them are still more or less valid as monophyletic clades and thus are still used for convenience (like Spartaeinae, Lyssomaninae, Dendryphantinae, etc.). However these actually represent lots of different taxon levels if you were organizing them strictly. For example, you could call Lyssomaninae a sub-family, and Spartaeinae a sub-sub-family, but Dendryphantinae would be a sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-family. The basic problem is that we've now mapped over 50 levels of phylogenic branching between the base of the Salticidae family and a species like Phidippus audax (and that number grows substantially every few years). If we mapped each of those branchings to a taxon name and level, we would have an infobox a mile long. In the academic world it has long been acknowledged that maintaining such a system is untenable and pointless. When you have 100 phylogenic branches defining the taxonomy of an organism, how do you decide which of those 100 branches you call a "family" and which you call a "tribe"? And what do you do when 20 new branches get inserted between the two? Clearly we have outgrown Linnaean taxonomy. The higher level jumping spider taxons that have been defined in the last decade are all unranked: Salticoida, Amycoida, Marpissoida, Astioida, Plexippoida, Aelurilloida, etc. This keeps us from having to rename all of them constantly as they get rearranged. The majority of the tribes are not even phylogenically valid at this point (i.e. they have been proven to be polyphyletic) and no one is trying to maintain them. They are simply deprecated. For example, Neon and Chalcoscirtus are about as unrelated as two jumping spiders can get, but according to Hallan's list they both belong to the Chalcoscirtini tribe. By using a list based on sixty-year-old taxonomy, we aren't doing our readers any favors. If you want to see an example of a jumping spider with more or less up-to-date taxonomy, see Neon. This is how most of them will look eventually.

Take a look at the Mammal infobox as well. These clades have nowhere near the diversity of the arthropods, but even they have outgrown the Linnean taxon levels. It's only inertia that keeps people using them at this point. Kaldari (talk) 01:58, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Scientists find taxon names useful, and make up names if there are none already in various branches of the tree - e.g. Coddington's RTA clade. Some subfamilies' names are useful, e.g. Spartaeinae includes both Portia and Phaeacius, despite the fact that these genera have very different approaches to predation. I prefer to handle the intermediate levels case by case. --Philcha (talk) 08:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

That reminds me - Phaeacius has no lead image. FIST – Free Image Search Tool) got me nothing. All the pics at Google Images have no licence details, or "all rights reserved" or a "CA-..." licence that says "no commercial use, no derivatives". It would be fun to show a specimen resting (which it does most of the time) on a matching background, as a puzzle for readers - perhaps with an easier one further down the article. This would be great for the "puzzle" lead image (after cropping off the text), and the site gives an email address insectzoos@hotmail.com   Do you know the WP procedure for dealing with licensing? --Philcha (talk) 10:36, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

This at peckhamia.com, also at Flickr, would be good for the easier pic, but has "no commercial use, no derivatives". --Philcha (talk) 10:36, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Meanwhile I'll can to look again for sources about reproduction of Phaeacius - Wikiproject Spiders may give me a lead. Reproduction of Phaeacius looks like a mystery - they're so sedentary and so very well camouflaged, how do they find each other? --Philcha (talk) 08:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

That's a very good question. Interestingly, some jumping spiders exhibit sexual dimorphism in ultraviolet coloration, so even if they look cryptic to us, they may appear colorful to a potential mate. Regarding photographs, you might try writing to H. K. Tang (from the Peckhamia gallery). I managed to convince G. B. Edwards and David Hill to both release several dozen jumping spider photographs under a Creative Commons attribution license. I've even paid a few people to release some. Just make sure you get them to send an email to OTRS so that the permission is documented. Good luck! Kaldari (talk) 17:30, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I've send an email to Thailand for permission for the ["puzzle" lead image - thanks for the advice. --Philcha (talk)

Re reproduction of Phaeacius, whatever signals mates give also advertises Phaeacius′ location to other visual arthropods, e.g. jumping spiders (whose primary colours are green and UV) and bees (flowers have UV "landing lights", which guide bees). Pheromones would also give the game away. My best guess right now is the article is about females (as usually in jumping spider the literature, unless males are specifically described), and the males wander around, give all the signals, and take all the risks - hmmm, that seems familiar. --Philcha (talk) 21:20, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Fauna Barnstar
		To Philcha, for writing several articles about arthropods and molluscs. Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:13, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Philcha. I see that you are already working to find the missing information for "Phidippus clarus". Best wishes. Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:13, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

You'll be sorry:-) I think I only need 0.2 of a point and then ...! --Philcha (talk) 17:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

By the way, your userpage says that you are "semi-retired". Perhaps you should consider removing that notice. Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:52, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately it's true. --Philcha (talk) 18:28, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Svetlana Kuznetsova

hello,

thank you for your review. I will try to fix all of those issues in 2-3 weeks. I found some information about her relationships and criticism. Regards.--♫Greatorangepumpkin♫T 13:17, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. --Philcha (talk) 07:01, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Alexander Alekhine

Thanks, you improved Alexander Alekhine quite a bit. His drinking wasn't covered adequately in the article before, but I think you hit an appropriate balance for a bio. Quale (talk) 00:29, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Portia fimbriata

The DYK project (nominate) 06:03, 19 June 2011 (UTC)