Talk:Leafy seadragon

Evolution

I look at this animal and its pink coral cousin and really think that our current theories of evolution cannot explain their appearance. I don't go as far as intelligent design but just how do they so perfectly fit into their surroundings. Many other animals live in their habitate yet do not develop camouflage to such a degree. I could understand one frond, but how does it get so many, that all blend in with the plants? I cant see that this can be by natural selection alone. Does anyone know of any work done on their evolution?

There's a lot of animals like that actually, if you think about it. Look at phasmids sometime. Not only do they perfectly resemble plant parts, but -different species- resemble -different plant parts- ... I agree that random chance can't possibly create such a perfect match, especially without creating thousands of imperfect matches every day.. and in the case of phasmids there's no reason unrelated "evolutions" would occur in the same family. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.73.48.43 (talk) 04:57, 1 February 2007 (UTC).

Also consider that some seahorses and pipefish species have appendages that help them blend into their environment. They are not nearly as developed as the leafy sea dragon, but its easy to see how one could have lead to the other. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.26.212.167 (talk) 18:20, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

When were they discovered by humans?

I heard the leafy sea dragon was unknown until recently because, well, the camoflage was so great. When was it discovered by humans? Tempshill 17:18, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I did a search on their scientific names and found references to the following names and dates:

Weedy Seadragon - Phyllopteryx taeniolatus (Lacépède, 1804)

Leafy Seadragon - Phycodurus eques (Günther, 1865)

--Danny Rathjens 05:33, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Which aquariums have them?

I'm interested which three "professional aquariums" have the leafy sea dragon as an exhibit. Also a source for this statement would be great. I know one of them is (or at least used to be) the Albuquerque Aquarium, which is where I saw them first. Stefan 00:14, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Whatever source that statement was based on is undoubtedly outdated. A quick Google search shows that they are probably exhibited at the Waikiki Aquarium, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Aquarium of the Pacific (Long Beach, CA), Melbourne Aquarium, Seattle Aquarium, Aquarium of Western Australia, Florida Aquarium, and that's just the first two pages! I'm removing the statement that says there are only three. --Rick Sidwell 05:31, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Booze. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.169.228.2 (talk) 15:54, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Propulsion

The article says that the leafy extrusions are not used for propulsion which leads to the question of how *do* they get around? I saw these fascinating critters at the Boston Aquarium last year and I saw that they get around by way of two sets of undulating translucent fins along their back that are barely visible. I am not sure of the proper terminology for this to add to the article, though. --Danny Rathjens 05:26, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I found the terms(pectoral and dorsal fin) and so added an explanation of their propulsion. These guys look really cool when you see them in motion; seemingly drifting until you notice the little whir of those fins. --Danny Rathjens 05:51, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Re: Which aquariums have them?

• The Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta Georgia have leafy sea dragons in exhibition WendyOlyvia 03:12, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
• They are also at the New England Aquarium in Boston ROxBo 23:13, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
• They is also a pair of young leafy seadragons in the Busan Aquarium in South Korea. 219.255.47.6
• The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago has some. 4 I believe.

also they have a whole ton at the Pittsburgh Zoo's aquarium. Probably 10 to 15, I'd say. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.160.222.253 (talk) 19:28, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I just came from the Florida Aquarium in Tampa Florida, there are two leafy sea dragons there, feb 09, 2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lizzya06 (talk • contribs) 21:45, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

As a major institution with success in breeding weedy seadragons it's quite possible that the Georgia Aquarium has leafies as well, but it doesn't appear to have anything on its website to confirm this apart from this simple factsheet, which doesn't say whether they do have them.

A Google search comes up with multiple links to tripadvisor.com and although the webpage is titled "Georgia Aquarium Photo: Leafy Seadragon at Atlanta Aquarium, Georgia" - the photo actually shows a weedy seadragon, not a leafy! A lot of other links point to photo blogs, mirror sites and similar material of dubious veracity, so it seems difficult to find a reliable source. Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 06:33, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Leafy dragon

They are small and they are a part of the sea dragon group. 

They look like seaweed and have leaves on the end of their mouth that helps them slurp like a straw. The females do not give birth to the babys

the males do.

Merge

• I am against a merge as the two topics are very distinct ROxBo 23:15, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Number of species, rare reproduction in captivity

The body of this article and the one on weedy sea dragons indicates that each is a solitary member of its respective genus but is unclear about what taxon they share and whether that is a sea dragon taxon as such or they simply share similar common names. It would be nice to see a clarification of this.

Also, it's apparently rare for these creatures to reproduce in captivity, but there is now (June 2008) a "pregnant" male weedy sea dragon in a Georgia aquarium: http://wral.com/news/strange/story/3034761/

71.111.253.136 (talk) 01:27, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Change name to 'Leafy Seadragon'

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved per discussion below. - GTBacchus^(talk) 13:48, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

---

Leafy sea dragon → Leafy Seadragon –

Rather than the current Leafy sea dragon which is used by some sources, I suggest that the article be renamed to Leafy Seadragon, as this is the name used by more official sources such as the South Australian Government, Australian Museum, Marine Life Society of South Australia, etc. (See external links section of the article.) Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 04:22, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I've now changed instances of Leafy sea dragon to Leafy Seadragon (the official common name) in the article text (but not in the titles of references where Sea Dragon is used). Having now updated the external links section, it seems that the use of Leafy sea dragon is to be found mainly in (many, but not all) U.S sources. It does also occur occasionaly in some more popular Australian sources such as newspaper articles, websites maintained by scuba diving clubs, and even some government and university webpages directed towards the general public.

In 2006 a redirect was created from Leafy Seadragon (then apparently seen as just a spelling variant) to the main Leafy sea dragon article. This all seems to have arisen because the article was originally started by an editor in the U.S., and there has never been a discussion over which form of the name to use.

The WP article on the only other seadragon species, the Weedy Seadragon (Marine Emblem of the state of Victoria), uses these same official common names in the body of the article, so the spelling in the two WP articles is now consistent. However, the Weedy Seadragon article uses the genus name, Phyllopteryx, for the article title, presumably because it was seen as a way out of similar past confusion.

Both articles still need a lot of improvement; but as they are brought up to GA level, consideration needs to be given to the articles' names.

Per WP:FNAME and WP:TIES, and the increasing use of the species as an highly recognisable icon for promoting both marine conservation and ecotourism in South Australia, I prefer the use of Leafy Seadragon rather than the genus name, Phycodurus. Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 06:25, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

For the reasons given above, I've now made the formal request for the name change. Please note that so far there have been no comments since I first informally suggested changing the name a week ago. Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 17:55, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

• comment—I don't have anything to add with regard to the space, but if moved the "S" should be lowercase. wp:CAPS says: "The common names of species generally do not have each word capitalized, unless proper nouns appear." ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:23, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Reply: I've just been digging through the MOS and found under WP:FISH#Common_names that "Common names should be written in sentence case rather than title case, following normal English usage and that of FishBase."

I'll change the names back to lowercase in the article (except where it is capitalised in the title of a reference) and now agree with ErikHaugen that the article should be moved to Leafy seadragon.

(I'll also put a link to WP:FISH#Common_names in WP:Naming conventions (fauna)#Capitalisation_of_common_names_of_species as I didn't find the latter helpful in this case.) Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 03:33, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Assessment comment

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I am doign a project on the leafy sea dragon so I was looking at this wikipedia page. as I am writing a scientific article i needed the actual base references (ie. journal articles) and Ive noticed that there is a mistake on this page. any of the references to (2) the sims webpage need to be redone, as that page and article describes a different species, the weedy sea dragon. Minty737 (talk) 02:16, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 13:46, 17 August 2011 (UTC). Substituted at 21:45, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

References

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