Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life

A few Wikipedians have come together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in these articles. These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles! For updates on Tree of Life and its subprojects, there is a monthly newletter published

This WikiProject is both a daughter project of WikiProject Biology and a meta-project in its own right. WikiProject Tree of Life aims primarily to represent the taxonomy and relationships of living organisms, as well as their extinct relatives, in a tree structure. Since there are millions of species, not all will be included, but we aim to handle as many as information, time, and interest permit. However, as a meta-project, Tree of Life directly includes only articles which have meaning across taxa or which pertain to taxonomy and systematics in general, or which do not fall under one of our daughter WikiProjects. A full directory of daughter WikiProjects has been listed below in the form of a cladogram. To see a directory of our sister WikiProjects under WikiProject Biology, see this link.

To see activity levels and active editors for these projects, use the Wikiproject Directory tool and find the project in question for further information. Some projects may not be listed. Current labels are based solely on template tags at the top of WikiProject pages and do not represent an in-depth assessment of the activity level of any project by WikiProject Tree of Life.

Outer

Inner

Related WikiProjects

• WikiProject Agriculture
  • Livestock task force
• WikiProject Animal anatomy
• WikiProject Animals in media
• WikiProject Animal rights
• WikiProject Evolutionary biology
• WikiProject Ecoregions
• WikiProject Forestry
• WikiProject Wiki Makes Video
  • Parks
  • Wildlife
• WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles
  • Global Names Index
• WikiProject Veterinary medicine

In cases where there is a formal common name (e.g. for birds), or when common names are well known and reasonably unique (e.g. "Cuvier's dwarf caiman"), they should be used for article titles. In all other cases, scientific names should be used.

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora) for article titles for plants and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) for article titles for animals.

Note the following guidelines in using scientific names:

• Names of genera are always italicized and capitalized, e.g. Homo, Rosa, Saccharomyces.
• Species epithets are always italicized and preceded by the name of the genus, either in full or abbreviated (e.g. Homo sapiens or H. sapiens; never just sapiens), as an epithet may also be used for a different species in another genus. They are never capitalized.
• Names of higher taxa are capitalized but not italicized, e.g. Hominidae, Mammalia, Animalia.
• Common (vernacular) names are not capitalised (except for proper names that are part of them). See Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Animals, plants, and other organisms.

For a

Not all species need have separate articles. The simplest (and probably best) rule is to have no rule: if you have the time and energy to write up some particularly obscure subspecies that most people have never even heard of, go for it! As a general guideline, though, it's best to combine separate species into a single entry whenever it seems likely that there won't be enough text to make more than a short, unsatisfying stub otherwise. If the entry grows large enough to deserve splitting, that can always be done later.

A useful heuristic is to create articles in a "downwards" order, that is, family articles first, then genus, then species. If you find that information is getting thin, or the family/genus is small, leave the species information in the family or genus article. Don't try to force it down any further.

Articles about taxa, such as families, genera, or species, typically contain some or all of these sections:

• (Physical) Description
• Taxonomy
• Distribution and habitat
• Ecology and behavior
• Conservation
• Uses
• Culture

See the general taxon template and descendant project pages, such as the WikiProject Plants taxon template, for more detail specific to different groups.

Example taxobox Cetaceans Temporal range: 53.5–0  Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N Early Eocene – Present
Clockwise from top: harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena).
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Artiodactyla
Clade:	Cetaceamorpha
Infraorder:	Cetacea Brisson, 1762
Parvorders
Mysticeti Odontoceti †Archaeoceti (see text for families)
Diversity
Around 88 species

Detailed taxonomic information, including notes on how taxa are defined and how they vary between different systems, belongs in the article proper. Where possible, however, a standard table will be provided to allow easier navigation between related groups and quick identification of what sort of organisms are being discussed. These are called taxoboxes. A typical taxobox is shown at right (it belongs on the top right of the page Cetacea).

There are three main sections to the taxobox:

• A header showing the name of the group, sometimes followed by a representative image.
• A table showing the placement of the group in a typical classification system.
• A footer, whose content varies, showing the binomial name or a species, or a list of subgroups for higher taxa.

Some items that are often included, but are not (necessarily) standardized, include:

• Breeding organizations' classifications (Dingo)
• Range map (see, for example, Orca)
• Synonyms (
  European lobster
  )

Position: The taxobox generally belongs at the top right corner of the article, unless it has been decided otherwise on the relevant talk page - for instance, if the article is not primarily about the biological group.

For cultivars — cultivated varieties of plants — don't use a taxobox; instead use a cultivar infobox ({{Infobox cultivar}}) as described at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Cultivar infobox.

For breeds of animals, don't use a taxobox; instead use the appropriate breed template; see for example Wikipedia:WikiProject Dogs/Dog breeds task force and Wikipedia:WikiProject Equine/Horse breeds.

Talkpages

Tag talkpages with: {{WikiProject Tree of Life|class=|importance=}}

Major groups should be given their own categories. When possible, these should use the common name in the plural, except for plants, where

Note that in addition to taxa, categories may also contain informal subgroups. For instance Category:Primates may include an article or subcategory for monkeys, although they are not treated as a formal group. They may also include some other articles that pertain specifically to members of the group, although they are not about them.

Categories for articles about the

The following userboxes are available to add to your user page:

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