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Wikipedia:WikiProject Spiders/Style guide

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The hints presented on this page are merely suggestions on how to best create a new page for the spider project. Read them, but write the pages the way you like. If you disagree with suggestions proposed here, please discuss this at the talk page.

Page title

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Scientific names should be used for the article titles unless the common name is well-known or reasonably unique. Examples of these include "Atypical tarantula" for Atypidae and "Jumping spider" for Salticidae. Below family, Latin names are almost always used for article titles, though there are exceptions. The southern black widow uses "Latrodectus mactans", while the Brown recluse can be found at "Brown recluse spider". In general, the idea is to make the article easy to find for those who are looking for it, so use your best judgment. When in doubt, use the Latin name and redirect the common name to the correct species. A semi-regularly updated list of common names can be found here.

Other rules to follow:

  • Family titles and higher taxa are capitalized, but not italicized.
  • Genera titles are always both italicized and capitalized. The automatic taxobox template will italicize the title by default, so the "Italic title" template isn't necessary.
  • Species titles should be both italicized and capitalized, and include both the genera and species.
  • Common names as titles are lowercase and not italicized.

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life#Article_titles for suggestions on naming pages dealing with a species, genus, subfamily or similar.

Common name capitalization

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Use sentence case for spider common names (rather than title case). For example, "black widow", rather than "Black Widow".

Short descriptions

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All mainspace articles should have a short description. Short descriptions should normally be limited to "genus of spiders". If the family has a commonly known and unambiguous English name, it can also be included. Examples include Salticidae ("Genus of jumping spiders") and Thomisidae("Genus of crab spiders"). See discussion here and generic implementation rules here

Taxoboxes

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Every page of a species, genus, subfamily, or other clearly defined taxonomical grouping should have a taxobox. Here are two templates for the most common hierarchy layers:

When choosing a picture to use for a species-level taxobox, choose the picture that would be most useful for identifying the species. Males and females are often significantly different; if so, try to find an image of each.

Taxon authors

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Spider names fall under the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Don't add or remove parentheses in author citations for species as they have a precise meaning: "Thorell, 1877" means that the species is in the same genus that Thorell used in 1877; "(Thorell, 1877)" means that someone else has later moved the species to another genus. (Author citation (zoology) explains in detail how zoological authors are cited.) A reference should always be given for the author citation (normally in the taxobox). The original description does not constitute a reliable source on its own. A reliable secondary source is needed that says this is the accepted authority; since, for example, after the original description it may have been discovered that the name was not acceptable under the ICZN Code because the species name was already in use in the genus, or the species may have been transferred to another genus, when parentheses need to be added to the author citation. The main secondary reference for the authors of family, genus and species names is the World Spider Catalog.

You can use the List of Arachnologists to easily wikify the author of taxa. If you don't find the author in this list, try to find them in one of these:

If you do find an author elsewhere, please enter it into the above list. There are also sometimes wiki pages about people that do not appear in any of these three lists.

To wikify the authors has several benefits:

  • it helps to find out who this person was
  • it provides (even if it's a redlink) an easy way to find all taxa authored by this person (via What links here).

Synonyms

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It's useful to list the synonyms in the taxobox. A reference should also be provided. The {{Specieslist}} template provides an easy way to format a list of species names, for example: 

| synonyms =
  {{Specieslist
  |Aphonopelma brunnius|Chamberlin, 1940
  |Aphonopelma chamberlini|Smith, 1995
  |Aphonopelma iviei|Smith, 1995
  |Aphonopelma lithodomum|Chamberlin, 1940
  |Aphonopelma smithi|Smith, 1995
  |Aphonopelma zionis|Chamberlin, 1940
  }}
| synonyms_ref=<ref name=.../>

The synonyms will then be listed as below, with automatic italicization for the species name and small text for the authority:

  • Aphonopelma brunnius Chamberlin, 1940
  • Aphonopelma chamberlini Smith, 1995
  • Aphonopelma iviei Smith, 1995
  • Aphonopelma lithodomum Chamberlin, 1940
  • Aphonopelma smithi Smith, 1995
  • Aphonopelma zionis Chamberlin, 1940

The World Spider Catalog can be used as a source of synonyms, but interpretation is needed because it gives a list of taxonomic references, not synonyms. As an example, consider its entry for Araneus arizonensis: 

Epeira arizonensis Banks, 1900a: 100 (Dmf).
Epeira arizonensis Banks, 1901a: 585, pl. 22, f. 5 (m).
Araneus arizonensis Petrunkevitch, 1911: 280.
Neosconella arizonensis Archer, 1951a: 38 (Tmf from Araneus).
Conaranea gertschi Archer, 1951b: 7, f. 17, 30 (f only, misidentified).
Araneus arizonensis Levi, 1973: 497, f. 60-71 (mf).
Araneus arizonensis Levi, 1991a: 290, f. 507-510 (mf).

There are only two synonyms here to go in the taxobox:

  • ✔ Epeira arizonensis Banks, 1900 – the species name arizonensis will always be attributed to the first describer, i.e. "Banks, 1900"
  • ✘ Araneus arizonensis (Banks, 1900) – Petrunkevitch in 1911 transferred the species to Araneus, so here "Banks, 1900" is placed in parentheses; Petrunkevitch isn't mentioned (he would be in botanical names, but isn't in zoological ones); however this is the currently accepted name, so isn't listed under "Synonyms" in the taxobox
  • ✔ Neosconella arizonensis (Banks, 1900) – another transfer, but not the currently accepted genus placement
  • ✘ Conaranea gertschi is not a junior synonym, but a misidentification.

Repetitions of the same binomen are never synonyms.

Distribution maps

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It's easiest to work with a layered template for entering range information into a world map. At the moment, pure green (#00FF00, (0,255,0)) is used, (example). I use such a template for the gimp, call me if you can use it. --Sarefo 15:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Distribution maps.

Numbers

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Spider taxonomy is a dynamic field, with dozens to hundreds of new species and genera being described each year. Furthermore, taxonomic revisions may split existing genera, or reassign species into new genera. Thus, it is a good idea to be general rather than specific: e.g. stating "contains around 80 genera and 600 species" rather than "contains 79 genera and 587 species" ensures that the statement will still be correct, and articles will not have to be updated with every taxonomic change.

References

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Suggestion on how to insert references:

The year is in parentheses behind the author's name, species, genera and journal name are in italics.

Tools make citations fairly easy, in a standard output format, and provide a checklist of items needed for each of type of citation (journals, books, news, web pages)

  • MakeRef runs in a different page than the article, and it is usually easier to run it in a different tab.

If a URL dies, Internet Archive's Way Back Machine often contains archived copies of web pages that have gone offline - including some older spider journal articles! It's easiest to supply the original URL, but the Archive also has a Search box into which you can paste the title. When citing archived copies: parameter accessdate= is still required, and you must also add parameter archiveurl=... for the link provided by Internet Archive (as well as the normal "url=..."), and add parameter archivedate=... giving the date when the archived copy was made (the Way Back Machine shows a calender, and click the archivedate to see the archived content)

Categories

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Articles about spider taxa and redirects to them should be put into appropriate categories.

  • For all ranks, use a "taxonomic category", typically the family category (e.g. Category:Cyatholipidae‎), or for large genera, the genus category (e.g. Category:Agyneta), plus for families and genera, the category for that rank of taxon (e.g. for families Category:Araneomorphae families or for genera Category:Mygalomorphae genera). For monotypic genera, use e.g. Category:Monotypic Araneomorphae genera.
  • For species, also use a "Spiders described in YEAR" category (e.g. Category:Spiders described in 1888). Do not use these categories for other ranks, because ultimately they are subcategories of "Species described in YEAR". "Described in" means "first scientifically named and described in", so it should only be placed on the scientific name – either the article where this is at the scientific name or the scientific name redirect where the article is at the English name.
  • For species, and optionally for narrowly endemic genera and families, add a "location" category. See Category:Spiders by location for an introduction to these categories.

Examples:

Mark stubs

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If you think an article is not yet useful for most people due to it lacking information, consider adding one of the spider stub templates to the end of the article. The categories at Category:Spider stubs provide a list of possible stub templates. This way it's easiest for other editors to find articles that need be taken care of.

Mark talk page

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At the beginning of a talk page enter this template:

{{WikiProject Spiders|class=CLASS|importance=IMPORTANCE}} or {{WPSpiders|CLASS|IMPORTANCE}}

where the words in capital letters are replaced by appropriate values. This directs readers to this project and also assesses the article (by quality or type and by importance) – see Article Classification. This is actually quite important; this way we can stay on top of more than 10,000 articles related to spiders.

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