Academic Kids:WikiProject Cetaceans
|
|
This WikiProject is about cetaceans - that's whales, dolphins and porpoises to you and me. The aim of the project is to write a good description of every known cetacean species out there (all 78, or 79, or 80,... however many there are :-)).
| Contents |
Queue
Put news stories here that perhaps should be integrated/referenced in appropriate articles (if you are _really_ into this stuff, maybe get Google News Alerts for "whale","dolphin" and "porpoise")
Announcements
- (26/06/2005) Added a list of species (List of dolphins and whales)
- (26/02/2004) All species now have IUCN status and a range map in the taxobox
- (12/02/2004) All species now have an article or part of an article
- (05/02/2004) There is a vigourous debate going on at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life about whether and how taxoboxes should be extended to include there. General comments there and specific comments about how cetacean articles would be best served here are welcome.
- (30/12/2003) We now have an article on each of the species in the Cephalorhynchus genus.
- (28/11/2003) We now have an article on each of the species in the Ziphidae family.
- (26/11/2003) We now have an article on each of the porpoise species. Shame the Delphinidae are five times as numerous!
- (24/11/2003) We now have an article on everything in the Mysticeti suborder. Shame the toothies are five times as numerous!
- (20/11/2003) Rice's classification moved in full to Cetacea article. This is liable to more updates... every book/webpage claiming to reproduce his listing says something different
To dos
Note that some of the listings here may not need much work - one could regard the lack of standard headings as for making a more personal and less boilerplatish article
- Bryde's Whale - needs headings
- Chinese River Dolphin - looks crap but only because many browsers can't display the chinese letters
- Humpback Dolphins - more to be said
- List of extinct species / evolution
What might be included in a cetacean article
| Fill in common name of species Fill in the coloured status | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||
| Binomial name | ||||||||||||||||||
| Fill in the binomial name | ||||||||||||||||||
| Add a range map here, if available |
Articles on every species have now been started. Most species have their own article with the exception of Mesoplodont Whales - too little information known for separate articles - and Humpback Dolphins - the lack of consensus from the taxonomists makes difficult to know what species to choose. Better to do at the genus level to avoid making a judgement
Images
An image in JPG or PNG format is very welcome, although the latter format is not as good for photographs. For public domain resources try the American National Oceanic and Atomospheric Administration (http://www.noaa.gov/), particularly the National Marine Fisheries Historic Image Collection (http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/historic/nmfs/index.html).
Range maps
The basic template map is the world map without country borders that can be found at Wikipedia:Blank maps.
The blue colour shows where the species is (sometimes) present and white is where it is absent.
The grey colour has R:205 G:195 B:204 The blue colour has R:0 G:0 B:255 (:-))
If you edit a map, try to save at full-quality so that no blurring occurs at the edge of the countries - this blurring makes further editting of the map more difficult because the "fill" function of many image editing programs doesn't work with the blurred edges.
What to include
Some topics that might (and probably should) be written about are physical characteristics (birth size and weight, adult size and weight (male and female), life expectancy, gestation period, lactation period, baleen or toothed, colour, callosities, fins size shape and existence, speed, what do they eat, interaction with other species etc.) Population and distribution including changes over time. Distinguishing between one species and another. The relationship between this species and the whaling and whale-watching industries. The discoverer/describer of the species. Scientific names. Taxonomy debates. English meaning of Scientific name. This list is not exhaustive!
The study of whales is cetology. Some information is probably best described in an article outside a particular species e.g. baleen.
Articles at higher than species level
... check out Category:Cetaceans
Species
- See the list at Cetacea.
References
There are huge numbers of books on the subject. The websites listed at cetacea may be useful for quick fact-verifying
- American Cetacean Society (http://www.acsonline.org/)
- British Cetacean Site (http://www.crru.org.uk/) especially interesting is taxonomy (http://www.crru.org.uk/education/factfiles/taxonomy.htm)
- Cetacea.org homepage (http://www.cetacea.org/)
- Walker's Mammals of the World Online - Cetaceans (http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/walkers_mammals_of_the_world/cetacea/cetacea.html#genera) (Unfortunately, the online edition of Walker's Mammals of the World is no longer available. The print edition may still be purchased through the Johns Hopkins University Press.)
Confessed contributors
- User:Pcb21 (Pete)
- Tannin
- Dante Alighieri | Talk (just the river dolphins, really)
- [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]]
- KJen74 - I discovered this project only this weekend, and I hope to increase my level of contribution as time permits.
- 68.169.113.246 Made the List of dolphins and whales page
Unconfessed contributors
- User:Jimfbleak
- User:NuclearWinner
- Loads of copyeditors
Other WikiProjects
Parent : Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life Grandparent : Wikipedia:WikiProject Biology Greatgrandparent : Wikipedia:WikiProject Science
Siblings : Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds (big sister!), Wikipedia:WikiProject Dog breeds (yapping little brother), Wikipedia:WikiProject Primates (big brother)
Children : None
Things to be standardizied
Capitalization: There was once a long debate about the capitalization of bird species on Wikipedia. The debate was backed by lots of research on both sides, but also became quite acrimonious. Call me a great wet lettuce (or Lettuce) but I for one hope to avoid repeating that debate, and get on with article-writing. Thus I propose we just borrow the convention from the bird project and then not worry about it too much. That is, capitalize species names when you write them in articles, e.g.
- The blow of a Blue Whale is 9m high.
and when you create an article for the species, create it with caps in the title and then immediately create a redirect from the lower-case version of the same name. (N.B.: I didn't take part in the original debate and don't particularly care what the standard is, but standards are often useful and many people want standards, so I am proposing this one).
- You are right IMO, and anyone who objects to importing the standard should know enough abt the birds discussion to explain why cetaceans should be different, or else undertake to show why it should be changed at least for both, and preferably for vertebrates (or for some higher taxon that includes both).
- And therefore someone who will be more active in this project than Jerzy should propose, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life or its talk page, that there be a general standard (currently, capitalize all English species names, but of course subject to reconsideration) either
- 1. for all species, or
- 2. for all children of an independent (not redirected) Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals or a Wikipedia:WikiProject Metazoa, where (in either additional project) the standard can be considered and promulgated without stepping on the toes of botanists (and perhaps microbiologists), whose realm(s) are the most likely ones to have conflicting naming or spelling standards in place.
One wrinkle: it is common practice in the cetacean literature to shorten e.g 'Southern Right Whales have no dorsal fin' to 'Southern Rights have no dorsal fin' i.e. drop 'Whale' as obvious. Two heavyweight books in the area are the Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals (which does this) and the National Audubon Society Guide to Marine Mammals of the World (which doesn't). I propose we allow (but not require) the shortening... it is better to avoid being unnecessarily prescriptive, and having two choices should make for less repetitious prose.
Spellings in taxonomy ( 'i' or 'ii', '-i' or 'es'): This seems to be inconsistent within the literature. Maybe we should have all article names in English, and make all common spellings of the Scientific version redirect to the English. I am thinking about sub-orders and families here; e.g. Mysticeti redirects to baleen whale.