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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 September 2020 and 11 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Christina Berotte.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:45, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Perceived level of difficulty

This page contains scientific terms or jargon. An educated reader with no background in biology may not be able to understand some of the content. I conducted a readability test by reading the first two paragraphs, where I was the test reader. Despite having a degree in linguistics, I was unable to understand what the author tried to convey. Example: "Invertebrates form a massively paraphyletic group. Given a common multicellular, eukaryotic ancestor, all contained phyla are invertebrates along with two of the three subphyla in Phylum Chordata: Tunicata and Cephalochordata. These two, plus all the other known invertebrates, have only one cluster of Hox genes, while the vertebrates have duplicated their original cluster more than once." I suggest that this article be edited for readability. Niekd (talk) 01:41, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

OK, look, I take your point. I have just had a go at tidying the lede up a bit, but I doubt that you will like the result much better than its predecessor. You see, when one deals with a technical matter, even a very sophisticated technical matter, that deals primarily with elementary (in the sense of basic, rather than trivial) concepts, it generally is possible (though it commonly is risky) to avoid technical terms or substitute simple expressions for them. In physics there are many such examples, such as "speed", "acceleration", "electric current" and so on. However, in fields of study such as chemistry and to a greater extent in biology, one is dealing with concepts based on very complex structures, structures that demand a lot of sometimes controversial or conditional terms when one refers to them. This demands the establishment of far more terms, much as one finds more names on a map of small urban features than on a wilderness of major peaks or oceans.
You used the term "jargon" and the impression that I got was that you meant it pejoratively. How far to approve or disapprove of jargon, or even how cleanly it may be defined, is a large subject, but as you may gather from this same article, the very term "invertebrata" itself might fairly be characterised as jargon. Omitting it however, would defeat some major objects.
In contrast, omission of scientific words is a principle fraught with traps. Consider "paraphyletic", which in modern biology is a very widely used term for a functionally crucial concept that many non-biologists might consider trivial. As you might see in the linked article, it means that a "group consists of all the descendants of some ancestor minus one or more monophyletic groups of descendants". Now, we cannot leave that out if we wish to convey all the important concepts within the topic. We could perhaps substitute "all the descendants of some ancestor minus one or more monophyletic groups of descendants" wherever we would otherwise have said "paraphyletic", but that would rapidly become tedious even to the uninitiated reader. So instead we might include that phrase the first time we use the term in any article, but firstly we would wind up with a very cumbersome article every time we deal with a field rich in technical concepts with their associated terms (practically any biological article, plus many other scientific fields (though surely not linguistics of course! ;-) ))
But even if we did, where does that leave us? What about every article following on that topic? Are we to repeat the necessary definition and explanation in every article that uses the concept? (You will observe that the definition given does not explain why paraphyly is significant; that would require a few articles in turn, including on monophyly and polyphyly, right?) If we omitted the definition from any article, then whoever read that article, unless already a sufficiently advanced student of the topic, might justifiably complain about the jargon and scientific terms. So in practice, what we do (when we do it properly, which of course we too often fail to do) is, instead of burdening our articles with redundant re-redefinition, to link to explanatory articles, as we did in this case, not once, but for many terms, because the article deals with the many relevant concepts.
It is by no means a perfect solution, but I hope you will agree that it is better than any alternative so far advanced. Unless you have a new suggestion? Thanks if so. JonRichfield (talk) 10:09, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Questions

I'm assuming invertebrates have a nervous system which connects their brains to their bodies (for muscle movement, sensation, regulatory functioning, et cetera), just no spine for housing? Is that correct?

In those animals big enough to have a nervous system, yes. Smaller animals, such as protists, have no need for a nervous system. But, in principle, yes, invertebrates have nervous systems that can be exceedingly complex - note the intelligent behaviour exhibited by octopi. See chordate for information about the spinal column. --Stemonitis 08:29, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Most invertebrates have nervous systems, except a few like sponges. It doesn't really matter if they are large enough or not. Also, protists aren't animals, so none have nervous systems. Richard001 08:17, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

What are some advantages that invertebrates have over vertebrate animals?

for one, arthropods can fall great distances (relative to their size) without getting hurt) due to having their bones on the outside. --Philo 23:30, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Stub

For a page on such a huge group of creatures, this page certainly is short! i think it deserves a stub warning thingy. I'd add it myself, but as a brand new user, I have no idea how... BLAH BLAH BALH Tiberius47 07:12, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

  • It's probably closer to a start class article, and overlaps a lot with animals (which, to a very good approximation, are all invertebrates), but it is very important and does need a huge amount of work. A pity that we still have so few biology editors. Richard001 08:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Category

Why no Category:Invertebrates as in other wiki's ?

OK, I start it.

It has existed but has been deleted in 2007. Because "most animals have no vertebrae". But other Wiki's developped the page, among them : French, Greek, Polish, Portuguese, Simple English, Turkish en Chinese.

So, for general harmony of Wikipedia, I think it is worthwhile to maintain it.

--Lucyin (talk) 13:34, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Other wikis are free to follow their own paths, and don't set any precedents for us (or vice versa). Category:Invertebrates is not a good idea. It tries to combine all animals except one phylum (or most of one phylum) into a single paraphyletic grouping. It doesn't make biological sense, and it doesn't make sense for categorising, either. --Stemonitis (talk) 13:59, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

OK ! I do no longer add anythink. You may "undo" my changes.

But it should be discussed throughout the Wiki community, as it is a well-known concept (although maybe not biologically correct). Perhaps should it be developped as a concept like vernacular names of birds. Wikipedia encyclopedia gains to be as "parralel" as possible.

--Lucyin (talk) 14:14, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is a well-known concept, which is why we have an article about it. That does not mean, however, that it is a good element in include in a broadly hierarchical categorisation scheme. --Stemonitis (talk) 14:17, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

3% solution anyone?

The lede says about 3% of animals are vertebrates in some sense; just offhand, that sounds suspiciously high to me. Does anyone have a more ... solid ... ref than Encarta? How many species of Animalia does that assume? JonRichfield (talk) 06:41, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I've added a Science ref that also contained 3%. Its not as clear as I'd like but I think it is saying that the 3% is 3% of recorded species and then goes on to imply (if not actually claim) that this is probably a significant overestimate (selection bias for vertebrates and a proposal by Erwin that there are a lot of unknown beetles) and that even that is probably an overestimate (author's proposal that there are probably a lot of unknown mites).TuxLibNit (talk) 18:59, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

101 %...

This article says that "only about 3% of animal species include a vertebral column in their anatomy.", but it also says that "Of the million or more animal species in the world, more than 98% are invertebrates."

If 3 percent of animal species have a vertebral column and 98 percent don't, then in total there are 101 percent animals... Which of the above claims is wrong? Joreberg (talk) 19:53, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I share your frustration, but really, given how little we know of the actual numbers, a 1% error would be a triumphantly precise estimate, don't you think? Personally however, I am in doubt about there being such a high proportion of vertebrate species. JonRichfield (talk) 20:06, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Wording in lede

76.170.85.124 edited the text, but apparently missed some of the intention of the wording, and lost it in the rewording, albeit without technical error. All animal life in all the phyla is "invertebrate" apart from one subphylum of the Chordata. One point is that all vertebrates combined comprise less than one entire phylum; they are not even the whole of the Chordata, but only a single subphylum out of about three. This is a point of perspective. The reinstated wording emphasises that point, not that most of the Chordata is vertebrated. The fact that only a minority (if it is a minority; I haven't counted) of Chordata are "invertebrates" hardly detracts from the huge preponderance of invertebrates among Animalia, both in number of forms and in the cladistic structure of the Regnum. I will do a bit of rewording in line with the edit, but if anyone wants to reword the part relevant to this point, please discuss it here first. JonRichfield (talk) 09:53, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I reworded a different section to be more clear and less wordy, and mentioned it here in case the original intent of the text was different from my rewording.
Original: What is more, many an individual invertebrate taxon has a greater number and variety of species than the entire subphylum Vertebrata.
Updated version: Furthermore, many individual invertebrate taxons have a greater number and variety of species than the entire subphylum of Vertebrata. - M0rphzone (talk) 04:29, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Protozoa

I have just reverted a deletion of Protozoa. I realise that the concept of Protozoa is not biologically coherent, but its deletion as it stands is not helpful either. One might do better with Protoctista or something similar, and argue about what an animal is or is not, but there are problems. Invertebrata as a group are themselves not coherent, but like Protozoa they can be convenient to refer to. Now, I don't have any fish to fry here, and if someone doesn't like mentioning 4-letter words like Protozoa, I won't kick up a fuss about removing them, but then there should be some sort of clarification and justification of the omission, and there also is some tidying up to do; for example, remove Protozoa, and you are left with eight groups, not the figure of nine mentioned in the text. That is sloppy work. I could have fixed it instead of reverting, but as things stand, that section is a mess anyway. How do we justify eight (or nine) groups rather than about thirty phyla? There definitely is some slog-work to be done. I don't mind helping, but I am no taxonomist, and it would be better if a species from that taxon could step in and rewrite the section. JonRichfield (talk) 06:19, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Given their general lack of fingers and inability to speak English, it's doubtful that any invertebrates or protists will rewrite the section. But I'll give it a whirl when real life allows. (I've been called spineless a few times; does that count? :-) ) 17:15, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
It sounds like the beginnings of a sound qualification. Good luck both before and during (maybe even after!) Rattle my cage if I can help.  ;-) JonRichfield (talk) 20:36, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Reverted good faith text

In case anyone wonders why I reverted the edit, someone had inserted after "The vast majority of animal species are invertebrates" the string: "and are dominant on Earth's fauna in terms of numbers, because only about 4% " I reverted that because it was redundant and pretentious wording, just re-stating the previous text, and vaguely at that. Whether 4% or 3% I am not much fussed about, as long as there is a useful citation. In an article of this type, it is not at all clear that the term "backbone" is specific enough. "Vertebral column" is more definite and in context the term was chosen deliberately. Please discuss before considering reverting in turn. JonRichfield (talk) 19:29, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Classification of invertebrates

This section seems to be nonsense. There are at least 31 invertebrate phyla, and that's just counting Arthropods as a phylum rather than a superphylum. There's 34 in our sortable table in Phylum. The section should be cut and reformed. If it means "there's 34, but only nine are generally taught to biology students", well OK, but even that would need a reference. [And I super, super-object to weasel words like "category". Show me one of those...] Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:51, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

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Hearing

  • Ear#Invertebrates has :
    Only vertebrate animals have ears, though many invertebrates detect sound using other kinds of sense organs.
  • Hearing has :
    In humans and other vertebrates, hearing is performed primarily by the auditory system.

So how do they ? --Jerome Potts (talk) 11:37, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Did you miss that the remainder of Ear#Invertebrates is a partial answer to this question? As invertebrates have so little in common the best you can get is list of different invertbrate groups and their known hearing mechanisms if any. Also there seems to be a rather gray area between what is vibration sensing and what is hearing. TuxLibNit (talk) 22:47, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

{{Press}}

@Sbmeirow: May I ask why the {{Press}} template that I added to this page was removed; you claimed it is because it "promotes vandalism of wikipedia", but I see it as showing Wikipedia editors that there are media articles on the internet talking about this page, showing that there may be increased attention on what goes on on this page. Also, this page is protected until 27 April 2017, so any vandalism IP couldn't vandalise it anyway. Also, how is a notice about a media article about this Wikipedia article going to "promote" vandalism of WP? Otherwise, what is the point of the template? Thanks.  Seagull123  Φ  20:02, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Coverage of this vandalism is New York Magazine's most-read story at the moment. [1] - Brianhe (talk) 19:57, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
@Brianhe: Surely that means the {{press}} template should be re-added then?  Seagull123  Φ  21:59, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
I don't know, because I do want to curb vandalism and these pranks are kind of widespread. Maybe you could suggest it for the Wikipedia Signpost which has an internal audience, and may be more accepting. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions is the link to use. - Brianhe (talk) 22:03, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
Please explain why this specific vandalism event is notable compared to a mountain of vandalism on wikipedia. Vandalism of a famous person article isn't a unique event, because a large number of famous people articles have been vandalized. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 02:07, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
submitted for consideration to next edition of Wikipedia Signpost TeeVeeed (talk) 15:38, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
currently, item was rejected from Wikipedia Signpost per editor. To answer User talk:Sbmeirow's query there, yes there is vandalisim, but this is about when the vandalisim is covered in the media. (and even encouraged there in my opinion). That was my point linking this discussion about rm press tag. Don't give attention to vandals no matter how creative or humorous, but what about when the media/press gives attention? I think press attention to vandalisim is noteworthy for a few reasons, and is not the same as ignoring it on the project. But there are also good reasons for ignoring outside coverage. TeeVeeed (talk) 13:51, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
As for media/press, it depends in what context the attention is given. If it ends up on the front page of a MAJOR printed newspaper or as a story in a MAJOR tv news, then yes. Unfortunately these days, lots of un-notable junk is dumped in news online websites to drive CLICKS, yet subject isn't notable enough to actually make it in a printed newspaper. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 19:23, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
I still don't see how one notice in a {{press}} template on a talk page of one Wikipedia article is going to cause someone to vandalise a Wikipedia article? Surely it's just that it points out to editors that it has been vandalised, and that vandalism has been mentioned in the press somewhere. What other uses of the {{press}} template are there then?  Seagull123  Φ  15:07, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
Also, Sbmeirow, when you talk about notability, are you saying that Wikipedia's notability policy applies to outside news sources?  Seagull123  Φ  15:09, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
User:Seagull123 to answer you, https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_coverage_2017 and the In the Media section of the Signpost depending on editorial oversight for some examples. Looking in past years, press mention of vandilisim has been noted/included, but I am not aware about any WP Policy statements either way concerning press mention of vandalisim.TeeVeeed (talk) 17:02, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

I've re-added the template above with this story from The Boston Globe, which I think counts as a major newspaper. Coverage in other sources is included below for reference.

—Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:48, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The White House

Seriously? For some reasons I cannot edit, but this is obviously a vandalism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SilversmithUA (talk • contribs) 16:40, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. It has now been reverted. Favonian (talk) 16:44, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

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Semi-protected edit request on 6 June 2018

- ! Invertebrate group ! Latin name ! Image ! Estimated number of
described species[1] Mke chev (talk) 22:33, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. LittlePuppers (talk) 03:08, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

List of invertebrates which eat their own bodiparts (usually legs) to survive

We need well-attested examples. Some invertebrates lose limbs in battles, and that might be misinterpreted. We need videos for proof.

Semi-protected edit request on 22 May 2021

In the taxonomy section on the right it says that vertebrata is cladistically included in invertebrata, even though it is the exact opposite. I think something is wrong can you change it? 2600:8800:6083:F200:4D37:9D05:DE41:C8D8 (talk) 18:37, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. ― Qwerfjkl | 𝕋𝔸𝕃𝕂  (please use {{reply to|Qwerfjkl}} on reply) 20:29, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
I have edited the infobox to remove the apparent anomaly of saying that it is everything except the Vertebrata and then stating that cladistically the vertebrata are included. It seems better to have a simple inbox without apparent contradictions. The explantation about Tunicates etc is already given in the lede. Since this is a paraphyletic group, the apparent pedantry doesn't really help when presented in the infobox.  Velella  Velella Talk   22:11, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Nick Clegg in macroinvertebrates

In the "Classification of invertebrates" section, under the heading "macroinvertebrates" heading, Nick Clegg is incorrectly listed as a macroinvertebrate. Jadanb07 (talk) 17:21, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

The edit was made by user Akaul94 at 22:01 on the 23rd of October, 2021. Jadanb07 (talk) 17:35, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

The issue has been fixed. Jadanb07 (talk) 17:48, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference IUCN1014 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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