Jump to content

Talk:Indian giant squirrel

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Secondary and Tertiary Sources and Capitalization

[edit]

I have changed the name of the page from Indian Giant Squirrel to Indian giant squirrel. The convention in mammal studies is unanimously not to capitalize; in other words, the capitalization so common in bird classification does not carry over to mammal studies. I am adding below a list of secondary and tertiary sources. (I will obviously need to take this up on a Wikipedia-wide level since a number of mammal pages have already been capitalized.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:53, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, 3rd Edition. Don E.Wilson and DeeAnn M. Reeder (eds.). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2005, 2,142 pp., 2 vols., ISBN 0-8018-8221-4. In the review of MSW3 by B. D. Patterson (J Mammal Evol (2007) 14:67–69 DOI 10.1007/s10914-006-9022-6), Patterson states, "Like its predecessors, the third edition of Mammal Species of the World (MSW3) is a product of the Checklist Committee of the American Society of Mammalogists. ... Information in each account of MSW3 follows a standard format that lists sequentially: scientific name, author, year and publication details; common name; type locality, sometimes verbatim but more often standardized; distribution, listing all range countries in which the species occurs; conservation status, denoting the most recent CITES, U.S. ESA, and/or IUCN listing for the species; any designated synonyms (including their authorship and year of publication) and recognized subspecies; and comments, ... The potential to link the edition’s rich taxonomic information with the extensive biological details of Walker’s Mammals of the World (also published by Johns Hopkins) and with the IUCN’s assessments of species status and threats is rich."

Sources that do not capitalize:

  • IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. See their Species Information: Neofelis nebulosa (Clouded Leopard). Note that in the taxonomy section, they write the common names in block capitals: CLOUDED LEOPARD (E), PANTHÈRE LONGIBANDE (F), PANTHÈRE NÉBULEUSE (F), PANTERA DEL HIMALAYA (S); however, in their detailed documentation, "clouded leopard" is not capitalized. (e.g. " The clouded leopard historically had a wide distribution in China, south of the Yangtze ... The clouded leopard is found from eastern foothills of the Himalayas through most of southeast Asia ..." (Boldfacing mine.)
  • Macdonald, David. 2006. The Encyclopedia of Mammals (searchable on Amazon). Facts on File. 976 pages. ISBN 0199206082. (David Macdonald is Professor of Wildlife Conservation at the University of Oxford, Founder and Director of the Wildlife Conservation Unit at Oxford, and creator of the documentary Meerkats United.) The only instances of capitalization are either in the titles of articles or in the table of contents, but never in the text. This goes for all mammal species, big and small, well known and little known.
  • Gould, Edwin, George McKay, and David S. Kirschner. 1998. Encyclopedia of Mammals. Academic Press. ISBN 0122936701. (See index on Amazon). (Edwin Gould is Curator Emeritus of the National Zoo, Smithsonian Institution, after 16 years as Head of the Department of Mammalogy.)
  • Perrin, William F., Bernd Wursig, and J. G. M. Thewissen. 2002. Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals (Searchable on Amazon). Academic Press. 1414 pages. ISBN 0125513402. (William Perrin is with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)).
  • Mammalian Species published by the American Society of Mammalogists, with 25-35 individual species accounts issued each year. Each uniform account summarizes the current understanding of the biology of an individual species including systematics, distribution, fossil history, genetics, anatomy, physiology, behavior, ecology, and conservation. The accounts vary from 2-14 pages depending upon what is known about the species (See their editorial board here; it includes Kristofer M. Helgen, Division of Mammals, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.)
  • Journal of Mammalogy also published by the American Society of Mammalogists. (ISSN 1545-1542, Bimonthly, the journal the flagship publication of the American Society of Mammalogists. Published since 1919, the highly respected international scientific journal promotes interest in mammals throughout the world by the publication of original and timely research on all aspects of the biology of mammals; e.g., ecology, genetics, conservation, behavior, and physiology.) Read the abstracts here. Not capitalizing vernacular or common names has been a long-standing convention in the journal. Here is the relevant instruction from the Suggestions for Preparation of Manuscripts Page, Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 16, No. 1. (Feb., 1935), "3. Do not capitalize vernacular names of animals or plants. Examples: raccoon; song sparrow; red maple."

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:53, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sciurus

[edit]

The image captions should have the subspecies in the genus Ratufa. I made this change once, but it was reverted with a vague reference to historical usage. I can't imagine a reason why we would prefer an outdated synonym for our image captions over present usage. Any objections to changing them to Ratufa again? --Aranae 16:28, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've fixed the problem. The reason for mentioning Sciurus is that the illustrations themselves mention only "Sciurus," so if our caption says only Ratufa, it gets confusing to the uninitiated reader. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:56, 6 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I further changed the captions to remove the innaccurate subspecies name of Ratufa indicus malabaris (which doesn't exist). --Saukkomies talk 06:10, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Subspecies

[edit]

Given that naming populations is always fraught with the usual problems of drawing lines, this section does not need to dwell on the four versus five subspecies treatments. It would be easier to mention the names used, their original geographic range demarcations (which I doubt were actually clear to the authors themselves) and the fact that the distinctions are unclear rather than using a table that gives an inaccurate depiction of "clearly defined treatments" ( apart from having redundant entries). Shyamal (talk) 06:33, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. Go for it! :) --Saukkomies talk 07:31, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Will try, need to unearth some of the literature first. Shyamal (talk) 07:56, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]