Talk:Animal

Necessity of dedicated Ecdysozoa and Spiralia sections

Of course this is getting into some rather deep water (what with how much is written on them in the article and how much work from so many people I'm talking about) but is the presence of detailed subsections for Ecdysozoa and Spiralia truly necessary when deuterostome phyla are adequately covered with a brief overview in the relevant paragraph and plentiful links to their articles proper? It is nice to shine a light on protostomes, but it does lead to quite asymmetric emphasis in this section and invites even more disputed taxonomy in, which the article already has in abundance I think we can all agree. I reckon it might be worthwhile to tighten up the article by removing Ecdysozoa and Spiralia as sections, moving the noteworthy examples up to bring it in congruence with the description for deuterostomes. The previous diagram contrasting radial and spiral cleavage would make up for the lack of the spiral cleavage specific one, and the controversy in spiralia can be left to its own dedicated article this way. If nothing else, the sections should be cleaned up (are we sure "The Spiralia's phylogeny" is grammatical?) if they are to be kept. Xiphosura^Talk∞Edits 13:40, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Those sections are also the first time those clades are mentioned throughout the entire article, setting them aside would bring the Bilateria section into general congruence with the second paragraph of the article: "the vast majority of bilaterians belong to two large superphyla: the protostomes, which includes organisms such as arthropods, molluscs, flatworms, annelids and nematodes; and the deuterostomes, which include echinoderms, hemichordates and chordates, the latter of which contains the vertebrates." Xiphosura^Talk∞Edits 13:43, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Replying to yourself ... Ok, I must say I broadly agree, having already slimmed down the phylogeny so that (ahem) it doesn't mention Ecdysozoa and Spiralia any more (it once tried to cover every phylum, that way madness lies). I'll have a go at slimming down the material as you indicate. The grammar is fine in BE by the way. I think we should get the phylogeny to cover the protostomes and deuterostomes so we have an accurate match with the section headings, to complete your logic. Obviously that must be cited; as I'm allergic to composite (ORish) trees, we need a phylogeny source that goes that far. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:52, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for that. The phylogeny section is definitely in a better state than it was, but the years of revisions seemed to have left some loose ends, at least considering article cohesion. With regard to steering clear of composite tree bloat, it would be great if we could find a grand review study covering covering current research on all this. It gets confusing when the article presents something as consensus, despite being explicitly "proposed" phyla, it ends up smelling of OR/synth even if none is intended. Is there a general process for how to present cladograms with disputed relationships? Xiphosura^Talk∞Edits 14:56, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Glad you like it, more or less. There are no 'proposed' phyla on any tree in the article, and there is certainly no OR as each tree is based directly on a single cited source. This article also certainly isn't the place to show disputes (with dashed lines, whatever) within the Bilateria, if that's your goal, it simply isn't this article's function to go into that sort of detail. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:12, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Sorry I should have been clear in what I was referring to, Nephrozoa as included in the Bilateria tree here is said to be "proposed" in its own article, which also emphasizes its controversial nature, though this one calls it consensus. Citation in Nephrozoa despite being a stub is from 2019, in this article the claim of consensus is cited with a 2014 source. This discrepancy is what is confusing to see. Xiphosura^Talk∞Edits 15:22, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Well, the Nephrozoa are quite well supported, and the alternative is the weakly-supported hypothesis that the Deuterostomia is paraphyletic. Swalla 2024 says the deuterostomes are a clade, so I think we can stay with what we have here really. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:29, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 February 2025

Hello everyone the Catalogue of Life states that there are 1,568,597 animal species. Since the number in the article is outdated, I would have liked to have updated it. Best regards and thank you very much, Matz2703

″Total number of described extant species as of 2024: 1,563,470 (According to the Catalogue of Life)″ → ″Total number of described extant species as of 2025: 1,568,597 (According to the Catalogue of Life)″ Matz2703 (talk) 17:29, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks for the heads up! cyclopia^speak! 18:34, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure this is the right approach: the total will not match the detailed breakdown in the many cells of the table, and as the text outside the table explains, estimates are made on many different bases and are wildly incompatible. It may be best just to remove the "total" row; there are better-explained totals in the text already. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:28, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

It is true that the breakdown is different, but that is because it is based on many different (and often outdated) sources, and that is the problem. CoL seems to be a reasonable updated source for the total tally. It makes better sense then probably to source all the table to CoL. cyclopia^speak! 22:00, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

I don't think so. If you read the text of the section, you'll see that it discusses multiple bases for estimates. The figures in the table are properly cited; CoL won't give us that sort of range of detailed data on parasitism and habitats. Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:08, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, this is a good point. However I would still prefer to have consistency where possible - and where not possible, well, we can't have it. cyclopia^speak! 15:14, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

@Cyclopia Isn't CoL a database? If so, it's not a peer-reviewed source necessarily. We need verifiable species tolls. Databases tend to include synonyms and outdated taxa. — Snoteleks (talk) 00:43, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Well, it seems to be a database maintained by actual taxonomists - see here. Peer reviewed papers tend to contain errors as well, I don't see why an academic database maintained and used by scientists should be less reliable than papers by the same scientists. Actually papers call it «the most significant international partnership working to deliver a list of all species by engaging a broad network of taxonomists and databases to contribute expert-curated lists for different taxonomic groups.» While no count of species can be perfect, it seems to me more reliable and consistent than a bunch of scattered and outdated papers. cyclopia^speak! 15:13, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Not a good move.

a) it only covers group numbers, not any of the habitat or parasitism/freeliving data, so it's at best a partial approach.

b) using it would therefore INCREASE the fragmentation of sources, not decrease it as you seem to imply.

c) the existing numbers are directly cited to reliable sources, whereas the database is cited to nobody knows what. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:49, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

CoL is a mixed bag but it does state its source databases, many of which are curated by active experts and up-to-date, but there are still taxa where they rely on old ITIS data or don't state a source. Strangely Vertebrates are not covered by up-to-date sources. The CoL species numbers will be an underestimate as many large taxa have 0 species. For instance, the beetle superfamily Cleroidea has zero species in CoL, whereas a 2015 research paper (Robertson et al 2015) says it has >10,200 species. The same paper has >19,000 species in Cucujoidea and >34 000 species in Tenebrionoidea, while there are only 229 and 875 species, respectively, in the CoL database. That's only 1100 species out of an estimated 63,000, more than 60,000 missing beetle species. I think the reason for this is they are trying to clean up and improve their sources databases. So its numbers should be used with caution.  —  Jts1882 | talk  16:11, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your informed comment! If so, then I agree to avoid using the database for now. cyclopia^speak! 17:19, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 February 2025

{Spelling grammar fix on paragraph 3}—— Dgcatcowchicken (talk) 18:33, 20 February 2025 (UTC)