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Taxon Ids

Hello Ganeshk!!! I saw one of your edits to Megastraea was to move the citation to the end of the sentence, and your note was to avoid taxonids. What does that mean? Should I NOT be citing the authority the genus or species after the name but rather at the end of the sentence, and why? I will do it however you guys want, but I need to understand that it is (if it is) a standard protocol, and the basis for it so it makes sense in my mind and so that I don't replicate a citation foopah. Thanks SO VERY MUCH for all of youe help and mentoring!!!Shellnut (talk) 16:12, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Citations are usually added at the end of the sentence. See Citing sources and Manual of style. I am quoting, "The citation should be added close to the material it supports, offering text-source integrity. If a word or phrase is particularly contentious, an inline citation may be added next to that word or phrase within the sentence, but it is usually sufficient to add the citation to the end of the sentence or paragraph, so long as it's clear which source supports which part of the text."

I wrote "add TaxonIds" on the edit summary. The TaxonIds template makes it easy for bots to link the Wikipedia page with WoRMS and other databases. A bot can for example pick up the ID numbers and check the WoRMS database to see they are valid. — Ganeshk (talk) 03:00, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

And thanks for the wavy barnstar. I am glad to be of help. — Ganeshk (talk) 03:03, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Ganeshk, should I be putting "TaxonIds" in the articles I am writing? If so, how, and where are they done?Shellnut (talk) 04:09, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, if the article you are writing is listed on WoRMS, then please add {{TaxonIds|worms=<ID>}} right after the External links section header (example). This will help the bot validate the status on these articles as well. Please see Template:TaxonIds for the other supported databases. — Ganeshk (talk) 11:01, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Link for list of Conus species?

I fixed the link to the article list of Conus species, the problem was that the link syntax can't deal with trying to put the word Conus into italics. Invertzoo (talk) 22:46, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

So, if you want to add the link to that article anywhere, just write Conus without italics and the link should work fine. Invertzoo (talk) 14:24, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

List of Conus species? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 14:31, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Good point Anna! Yes that's right, as Anna showed us here (look at her message on the edit page and see how she did the link) you can use a "pipe" and put the title however you want it to be after the pipe, but it won't work if you don't use a pipe. Shellnut do you know about the pipe (vertical line) and how it works when you are making a link? If you don't know that yet we can explain it to you. Invertzoo (talk) 15:13, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch Invertzoo and Anna! Yes, I know about the verticle pipe - I learned about it a few weeks ago and have been using it in my taxobox image descriptions and in those few articles I have done. Nice to have the link from Conidae to the species list.Shellnut (talk) 19:35, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Great! As I said last week, pretty soon I am going to be asking you how to do stuff rather than vice versa! Well done. Invertzoo (talk) 00:46, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Subpages of your user page

Hello again Shellnut. Because you said you wanted a subpage, I went ahead and listed two subpages of your user page; you can see the links on your user page, under a new heading. For the first one of the links I went ahead and put a couple of sentences on the subpage so that the link is now a blue link. The other one is still a red link, which means you can create it if you want to, by adding a bit of content, or leave it as it is or even delete it if you don't need it right now. You can see how easy it is to make a subpage. I hope this is helpful to you, Best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 15:07, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Taxonomy issues

On taxonomy issues, I had been discussing the Coralliophilinae with Invertzoo (see above) and had run into an issue with Liniaxisbeing three species, two of which WoRMS has now placed in the genus Coralliophila, and one of which is lost in cyber space. Should I make the changes that I have identified through WoRMS to that genus? Also, similar issues have arisen with genera in the Muricidae for individual species in the genus Phyllonotus and Hexaplex rather than lumped into Chicoreus. E.g,Phyllonotus erythrostomus and Phyllonotus regius, see ref: Merle D., Garrigues B. & Pointier J.-P. (2011) Fossil and Recent Muricidae of the world. Part Muricinae. Hackenheim: Conchbooks. 648 pp. page(s): 114. I have identified these issues when getting ready to upload images, and trying to be safe by checking with WoRMS and Wikipedia's articles before uploading the images - to avoid file name problems like I have had previously. Any ideas JoJan?Shellnut (talk) 17:50, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't posses the book "Fossil and Recent Muricidae of the world. Part Muricinae. Hackenheim". Therefore I don't know what the authors state about Chicoreus, Phyllonotus and Hexaplex. If you trust that their opinion is correct (and why shouldn't it be not), you can edit the corresponding articles. As to Liniaxis, I have already edited the article to show the synonymies. Feel free to add more. JoJan (talk) 19:01, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks JoJan! I just did not want to get into major article edits without some kind of "nod" from the powers that be. You know, like the Conidae stuff we talked about ... but I did have an idea there. What if I was to made article pages for each of the genera or sub-genera used by Tucker & Tenorio and shown as an "alternate representation" by WoRMS, then add the species under each genus/sub-genus, with links to their main pages (if any)? Would that work within Wikipedia and satisfy both camps?Shellnut (talk) 21:30, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

The article Conidae explains clearly the situation we have to deal with at this moment : recognized genus or alternate representation ? I don't mind if you create articles such as Africonus etc. (with a list of species involved), but explain each time that it is still regarded as an alternate representation by some authorities, such as WoRMS. When the complete molecular phylogeny of the family will be published, we'll see the conclusions. In any case, we will have already at hand an article under each new name and only a few changes will have to be made. JoJan (talk) 13:49, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I added an emphasis here and put genus names into italics, hope no-one minds. Invertzoo (talk) 19:42, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I have taken a stab at writing a genus article on the "alternate representation" of the Conidae for the genus Africonus, with complete WoRMS citations as to each species. Assuming that the format and content is acceptable to JoJan and Invertzoo, I would propose to do the same thing for the other "alternate representation" genera. If it could be done by a Bot it would be much less time consuming. I was thinking that each species link should be redirected to the Conus species link so that there could/would be only one article per species regardless of the outcome of the current molecular phylogeny studies. Any thoughts?Shellnut (talk) 09:25, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we should never have two different articles for one species, so each species link in the new genera pages should link to the existing species page, even though that is given as a Conus species still. But you do not use a Redirect page in order to do that, instead you simply by using a pipe in the link, putting the Conus name first and then a pipe and then the T&T name. Do you know what I mean...? Best, Invertzoo (talk) 02:16, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Africonus ?

Hello Shellnut. I took the liberty of copying this message from you and putting it under a new heading, even though it is a continuation of a previous conversation. I did that because there were so many conversation threads going on at once on your talk page that it was hard to see which ones were the new messages. Invertzoo (talk) 17:27, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

"I have taken a stab at writing a genus article on the "alternate representation" of the Conidae for the genus Africonus, with complete WoRMS citations as to each species. Assuming that the format and content is acceptable to JoJan and Invertzoo, I would propose to do the same thing for the other "alternate representation" genera. If it could be done by a Bot it would be much less time consuming. I was thinking that each species link should be redirected to the Conus species link so that there could/would be only one article per species regardless of the outcome of the current molecular phylogeny studies. Any thoughts?Shellnut (talk) 09:25, 13 November 2011 (UTC)"

I took a quick look at the new article. The wording of the prose needed some alteration to make it first of all clearer in meaning and also, neutral in tone (not colored with Point of View). I am currently working on it. It still needs a lot more work. There are many statements that are unsupported by a reference. Let's see what JoJan says about it too.

In general, for something as important as this you might be better off posting your message on JoJan's talk page and on my talk page so you can be sure we see it immediately. Also I very much need to show you how you can put together a draft of an article on a subpage of your user page, where it can be fixed up by yourself and others before it goes live on the encyclopedia. Best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 17:27, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Invertzoo, and greetings to you and JoJan! I only did the one genus article as I wanted to ensure that it met with the standards of the senior editors of Project Gastropods (yourself, JoJan, and Ganeshk, etc.) before putting out others. I tried to follow the tone of the Conidae article after JoJan had edited my prior comments therein about the "alternative representation" scheme to ensure that it took what I felt was a neutral point of view. Once we have a cleaner statement on that issue, and I have your (plural) approval I would be happy to work on the genus articles - or if the Bot that Ganesk ran on the Asprella article can be done for the others I would then go in and add the "alternative representation" paragraphs, citations, photo images (one per genus to the extent I have shells for them). Let me know what I can do to help here. I am trying to contribute but do not want to step on anyone's toes so maybe that subpage of (my} user page is a good idea to learn. Feel free to e-mail me direct on this too, or we could talk by phone if you like.Shellnut (talk) 21:35, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Hey, no problem Shellnut, you are doing great work, don't let me discourage you in any way! We really appreciate everything you have done, and your general enthusiasm! JoJan is a very good person to have check something like these articles, where the subject is a bit controversial and where we might need more refs to support the various pieces of info. I wanted to get the whole approach a little bit worked out before we do too much more of this, that's all. I hope you don't mind, but I went ahead and set up two links to subpages of your user page for you. You will find them on your user page. The first one I put a couple of sentences in so it became a blue link. The second one currently has no content so it is still a red link. You don't have to use them only for drafting articles. Best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 22:58, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Invertzoo, please do not think for a moment that I am discouraged. Rather, I am trying to be polite and respectful of your (plural) experience and the customs of Wikipedia. It has been and remains my intention to do what I can to better the Project Gastropods pages where within my power to do so. I am merely trying to respect the system. My first "alternative representation" genus article was merely to test the waters there. Second, I think that the revised links to the species articles are good, but somehow we lost the individual links to WoRMS which gave additional information and showed the alternative genus and species name with a WoRMS species ID number. I believe that added value, especially if the issue is later resolved in favor of the alternative genera. I like the idea of having a reference to the WoRMS page for each species as well as a link to its species specific page on Wikipedia. Don't you? Also, some of those species have been "blessed" or approved under the alternative genus by P. Bouchet himself, as reflected by his name and edit dates on WoRMS. Let me know when you and JoJan are OK with the format of these genus articles. Thanks for all you help!!!! I am really not trying to be controversial with this, just accurate and complete.Shellnut (talk) 00:01, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi again Shellnut and thanks for your very considerate note and your very good work. I am currently just waiting for us to hear back from JoJan, because he is far more experienced than I am with this kind of thing. I trust his opinion whereas I feel that I am not really expert enough on this kind of question. Invertzoo (talk) 14:31, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Invertzoo!!!Shellnut (talk) 19:37, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I checked the article Africonus. As a test for the other articles with genera derived from Conus, this looks promising. The significance of "alternative representation" is clearly explained. However, the casual reader will wonder what makes the genus Africonus different from its prior name under Conus. I suppose the key for the genus (morphology, radula, genetics...) is explained in the book by Tucker J.K. & Tenorio M.J. (2009), Systematic Classification of Recent and Fossil Conoidean Gastropods. [1]. But the price of 80 € is a bit too steep for my pockets. Perhaps you can find a bit or two on the internet. I can't go deeper into this, since I'm fully occupied with checking the GaneshKbot and adding information where I can. Anyway, your work is much appreciated. JoJan (talk) 14:58, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

So JoJan is saying it would be good in that article if we could indicate what makes Africonus different from classic Conus (Conus sensu stricto), but he (and I) can't afford to buy the T & T book. Also really from my point of view, some more of the statements in the article could use an online citation to back them up. But other than those things it looks good. Invertzoo (talk) 12:51, 16 November 2011 (UTC) Invertzoo (talk) 12:51, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again Invertzoo!! I'd be happy to look up references if you would tell me what statements you would like more authority for. As to the differences betweem classic Conus in the sensu stricto and each of the genera set forth in Tucker & Tenorio that will take time and work (just like species descriptions) to avoid copyright violations, etc. I too would need to buy the book or get the info from a non pay wall source. I have e-mailed the senior author of the study to try to get his assistance. We will see if he replies.Shellnut (talk) 21:13, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Do let us know if you hear anything from Dr. Tucker. What I did just now was I went to the section on "Significance....representation" and put a couple of "citation needed" tags in. I must say I am being a bit strict with this, but since this section may end up in 82 new genus articles, we might as well get it just right now rather than trying to fix all 82 of them up more at some later date. All good wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 02:32, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Update on Africonus

Hi Invertzoo!!! I just "hit pay dirt" asking for help. Dr. Tucker has kindly corresponded with me and has provided me with data without the "pay wall", including complete reference citations. T&T (2009) heavily cross referenced their work with molecular phylogenetics work already performed and published by many other authors, with a strong correlation in their data. They focused on morphology and radular characteristics (which they found to be tightly tied into DNA testing as have others) because they wanted to be able to include fossil species and data in their analysis and classification system. Back to paleontology again! I will put together a list of citations where needed, and beef up others. I also located communications I had with Dr. Kohn, apparently from 2008 (predating T&T's work), on molecular phylogeny work done by Christopher Meyer while he was a post doc of Kohn's. Is "personal communications" appropriate on Wikipedia? It is used all the time in "peer reviewed" publications, including Bouchet et al. (2011) "A New Operational Classification of the Conoidea" (see p. 275 ... "A molecular phylogeny of the Conoidea is currently in preparation (C. Meyer, personal communication)".) Finally, not to sound like we are "taking sides" or making a "point of view" known, but would it not be more fair (and thus not making a POV) to avoid using argumentative labels such as "alternative representation", and instead use "Linnean system" and "Tucker & Tenorio system" on the header(s) and then use the coined phrase "alternative representation" when referring to how WoRMS designates it? From what I can see, even on WoRMS (if you look at the T&T genera articles on WoRMS), almost all newly described species in the Conidae are being placed into one of the "genera" in the T&T system rather than lumped into Conus. JoJan seems to be overloaded right now, so I am posing these REALLY TOUGH taxonomic questions to you as they appear to be more appropriately "Wiki playground rules" questions. Thanks in advance for your help and mentoring!!!Shellnut (talk) 00:15, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Good news, it's always really nice when the professionals are prepared to take our work seriously. But are you able to find how precisely each of the new T&T genera are defined? That's what I think we can't do without the book, and that would be extremely handy to know if we are going to make articles on each of the genera.

To answer your first question: on Wikipedia we cannot use "personal communication" because the references we use are all supposed to be ones that anyone can check. Also, one Wikipedia article has often been worked on by a large number of people, many of whom are more or less anonymous, so a reader could not determine who had received the personal communication, what that person's real name is and where they work, and also would also not know whether that person has a professional reputation that could be damaged if the person lied about having been told something by an expert. It's very different when you publish a paper in a scientific journal and then people know exactly who you are and to what degree they can trust what you say.

To answer your second question, "alternative representation" is not an argumentative label, it is a fact that the source we referred to uses that way of referring to these names. On Wikipedia we can only go by what sources say or do. We are not allowed to editorialize about things and express out own opinions. WoRMS is currently the No. 1 source we are using on marine gastropods. WoRMS has Dr. Bouchet and some other world-class taxonomists working on it constantly, and we follow their expertise and their decisions. We pretty much have to do something like that, and it is best for us to follow one very reliable overall system. On Wikipedia we cannot make our own decisions about what we think is the right taxonomy, we are not allowed to do that on here. We are just an encyclopedia and we publish knowledge that other people put together. The reason why the new Conus species are being put into one or another of the new genera is because the people who named those species chose to do that in the papers in which those new species were described. That does not mean that even those authors agree that T&T were correct in every single species they assigned to every single one of the new genera. Cone snails are a very big group and a very difficult group. Once the results of the new studies come out, it might turn out that T&T grouped some the species into some of the genera incorrectly; anything is possible.

All good wishes to you, Invertzoo (talk) 02:08, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Invertzoo!!! Yes, I was provided an electronic copy of the manuscript but asked NOT to hand it out as it is published and sold for profit in book form. I can write descriptions from the text of the manuscript to distinguish the genera from Conus sensu stricto. I did find, however, a peer reviewed published article and a website published interview to back up that assertion - separate and apart from my personal communications with Dr. Kohn. Check out my new revisions, including the references to Linnaeus and the Linnaean system. Is that appropriate without expressing a POV?Shellnut (talk) 02:29, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

You can always refer to the book by T & T. It doesn't matter if you possess the electronic version. Anyone in possession of the book can check your contributions and that is what matters. This method complies with the rules of WP:REF. JoJan (talk) 18:45, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

More on Africonus

I took a new look, a close look at the list within the Africonus article this evening, and realized I am not at all happy with a couple of things. Firstly it says:

The following species are alternate representations:

and then it says:

• Africonus anthonyi Petuch, 1975 represented as Conus anthonyi (Petuch, 1975) (alternate representation)
• Africonus antoniomonteiroi (Rolán, 1990) represented as Conus antoniomonteiroi Rolán, 1990 (alternate representation)
• Africonus bellulus (Rolán, 1990) represented as Conus bellulus Rolán, 1990 (alternate representation)
• And so on

The way this section is set up makes it very confusing to someone who is not familiar with the situation. For one thing, it makes it look as if the name Conus anthonyi is the alternate representation. That is not the case at all. It is the Africonus anthonyi name that is the alternate representation.

Also the lead-in sentence "The following species are alternate representations" does not make sense. A species cannot be an "alternate representation", only a name can be that.

I am too tired to suggest something clearer this evening, but I will try to think of a better way of wording these lists and the lead-in sentence tomorrow.

Best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 02:32, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello again Invertzoo!! Those modifications were made by Ganeshk when he played with the BOT and revised my initial work on the article. I had used references to the WoRMS articles by their species number showing the page in WoRMS noting the Africonus species name as an alternative reference. That made a long list of citations and Ganeshk modified it to read as it does now, probably using the BOT but we will have to ask him. I can clean up the lead in sentence to reflect that the "name" is an alternative representation from the traditional Linnaean classification using Conus. That may help with the clarity issue.Shellnut (talk) 02:40, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I have made an attempt to clarify it, and I think it is clear now. I looked back at the WoRMS website for the genus Africonus and found that the offending language (poor organization) was simply lifted from there, so it was probably done through the BOT.Shellnut (talk) 02:54, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, thanks for your note, Shellnut. Now I understand where the wording of the list came from. A couple of general things I wanted to say are that since we are an encyclopedia, we want to make our text as easy to understand and pleasant to understand as possible, even for non-specialists, and since we are electronic and not on paper, we don't have to concern ourselves with creating short dense descriptions like the ones you find in published papers, where the less words used the better. For example, on Wikipedia in text we always use whole sentences, not note form.

I think we have to be careful both how we use the adjective "Linnaean". It's fine to call Conus a Linnaean genus, because it is one, he named it. But I don't feel comfortable about calling the traditional taxonomy of putting all Conus species in Conidae "Linnaean", because it makes it sound as if that taxonomy has been completely unaltered for over 300 years, which is not really true or fair to say. And one could argue that the T&T taxonomy of the Conidae is still Linnaean in that it uses genus and species in the same way that Linneaus did, as rigid ranks of taxa.

However one thing we must always do, to at least seem professional, is to put genus names like Conus in italics whenever we use them. I encourage people to use italics for genus names even here on our talk pages, which are more informal, because once it becomes a habit to do this, then it becomes automatic and you don't have to remind yourself to do it when and where it is important to get it right. You may have noticed that I have been changing genus names to italics on the talk pages whenever I notice they aren't in italics, even in other people's messages. Maybe this is an obnoxious thing to do, but it is in a good cause. :)

So If you look at the Africonus article now you will see I changed the wording of the list, and also a little bit changed the intro, and the explanation further down just to make everything clearer still. I want to give the article another look this evening or tomorrow morning but certainly it is coming along great. Thanks for all your good work. Invertzoo (talk) 14:39, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

P.S. I am thinking that perhaps we should shift the discussion of the T&T genera articles to the Project Talk page because it is such an important discussion. Invertzoo (talk) 14:39, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Invertzoo, and good morning! I apologize for getting a little sloppy last night in my notes here (failing to use italics or blue lining). Usually I do that and either say Conus or Conus. I tried to change the italics to blue line in the article in most places as it seemed appropriate to do so. This morning I wrote a rough description for Conus sensu stricto and Africonus for comparison, and I will post it on my "sandbox" draft spot which you created. I tried to use whole sentences for the most part, rather than one word or one line notes, or dense descriptions. It may take a bit of polishing though.Shellnut (talk) 15:45, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello and good morning again Invertzoo! I just looked over the revisions you made to Africonus and it looks great!!! I really liked the changes to the wording on the species links, the language was awkward at best before. The only comment I have is the use of "WoRMS" in the bold header, do we want to use the acronym rather than the would name spelled out as World Register of Marine Species up front without an explanation of the acronym? I know that in a header it can get too long without abbreviations, but maybe the average reader does not know it. Whatever you think is best, as we all use the WoRMS acronym casually. P.S. - I just posted my genus descriptions on the "sandbox" of my User Page.Shellnut (talk) 16:08, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

The Strombus Thinker award

		The Strombus Thinker
		Because you are always thinking about gastropods and their shells, I hereby present to you this award I've drawn myself. What could he possibly be thinking? -- Daniel Cavallari (talk) 19:47, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to wikiproject Gastropods, Shellnut! It's good to have another shell lover with us. Daniel Cavallari (talk) 19:46, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello and thank you Daniel!! I don't think I've seen your name come up before. I take it you are anoher senior editor and Gastropod Project person. What area(s) of molluscs are you into?Shellnut (talk) 21:31, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Daniel was busy for a few months IRL (in real life) and because of that we did not see much of him here for a little while, however fortunately for us he is back again. He has done a lot of fabulous work in the gastropod project previously though! More or less by himself he raised several of our articles up to Good Article status (which is by no means an easy task), he created the article Byne's disease, and he also helped me go through literally thousands of our older stubs fixing them up and updating the taxonomy. Daniel is one of our very few professionals: he has a job in the mollusk department of a major museum in Brazil. In my humble opinion he seems to be a thoroughly nice guy all round! Invertzoo (talk) 19:52, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Awww thank you for your kind words Susan. I feel really flattered! It's just the way it is, I do enjoy wiki-writing! Daniel Cavallari (talk) 23:49, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Asprella

Hi Shellnut, I have used the bot to create the Asprella article. — Ganeshk (talk) 17:43, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we can wait a bit and not create too many more of these new genera articles until JoJan and I have decided what the best wording for the introduction should be? Best wishes to all, Invertzoo (talk) 19:34, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Sure, I will hold off on creating new genera articles in this family. — Ganeshk (talk) 22:29, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

I just want to see what JoJan has to say about the new Africonus article after I have revised the intro and the analysis, because I very much trust his judgement on this kind of thing. Invertzoo (talk) 15:40, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

From what I have read JoJan has OK'ed the basic format of the Africonus genus article, and Ganeshk made this article (from the Africonus article and WoRMS) with the BOT, which Invertzoo and I have both extensively edited ... so I have taken the liberty to copy those edits over here to Asprella and have gone to each species link to ensure that the WoRMS links both work and any improper genus names (by another young editor not to be named herein) are reverted to Conus per the agreed standard in WikiProject Gastropods. I had to change 2 or 3 species articles to from Asprella to Conus and in the process found a decent image to use for the genus article. I will work up the comparative description and add it in short order. At that point I intend to cease any further Conidae genus articles until I hear back from Invertzoo and/or JoJan with feedback on my section distinguishing the genera. P.S. - I have now corresponded via e-mail and Facebook with both John K. Tucker and Manuel J. Tenorio, who were both extremely helpful and provided significant insights. Dr. Tenorio also provided me with information about the status of the mega-molecular phylogeny work being performed currently and Dr. Philippe Bouchet's supportive yet cautious position on the issue.Shellnut (talk) 02:28, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Odostomia

Do you happen to posses photos of species of Odostomia, since many species occur off California and one species Odostomia esilda is even endemic to the Pacific Ocean off San Diego ? This would be much appreciated. JoJan (talk) 16:18, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I do have 5 California species (11 total from the genus) of Odostomia but not Odostomia esilda in my collection. I have not photographed them yet, but I am sure that I could do so. Would you like me to take some Odostomia pictures? I have the following Califorinia species: Odostomia aepynota, Odostomia eucosmia, Odostomia helga, Odostomia navisa and Odostomia virginalis. What's your pleasure?Shellnut (talk) 16:31, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, I just looked to confirm ... those dudes are REALLY small!!! I knew they were little, but WOW. I am sure that I can photograph them, but the images may take some time to do, crop and zoom in. I will have to place them on a smooth surface to shoot as they are way to small to elevate on a nail or pin head. Finally, my identifications may be off (as they are micromollusks) so I will need JoJan or someone to review them.Shellnut (talk) 16:39, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Please, go ahead and make photos of them all. There is almost nothing available on the internet. Yes, they are micromolluscs, measuring usually between 2 and 5 mm. A good photo (one with with the aperture in front, and another one with the back as to show the keels) could be made in macrophotography at high resolution (10 MB or more) and then be cropped. A photo under a microscope would be asking too much. Identification is problematic, but I'm in the course of describing most West American species in this genus. You can always check at Odostomia. There is also a category in the Commons Commons:Category:Odostomia, where I added some drawings from old publications by Tryon (1889) and by Bartsch (1903). JoJan (talk) 17:13, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Good morning JoJan! I will give it my best shot. I have a Canon Rebel EOS camera with an 8 megapixel maximum capacity. I always shoot images in full quality. What I will probably do is to use extension tubes, a 100 mm macro lens, and screw on magnification filters adding a total of 10x, and of course a tripod and tether cord to avoid vibrations while taking the image. I will have to play around with this because it has been over 25 years since I took photos of such small biological items (I had shot pictures of juvenile Callianassa gigas and Callianassa californiensis claws for morphological studies). We will see how the photos come out.Shellnut (talk) 17:29, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Great ! There is no hurry. And good evening from here. JoJan (talk) 17:59, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi JoJan! I will get to those photos, maybe today. As to time of day I keep forgetting that you are in Europe and I'm in California. Have you seen my User Page's "sandbox" draft of the description for Africonus?Shellnut (talk) 20:15, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Hello JoJan and good morning!!! I have uploaded onto WikiCommons photos of all of my Pyramidellidae species (18 species), including Odostomia, Peristichia, Pyramidella, Oscillla (WoRMS shows only 5 species), Iselica (looks like WoRMS has this in the family Amathinidae with only 7 species), and Turbonilla. All specimens were photographed today/tonight under bright lights using a 100mm macro lens and 125mm of extension tubes at 1/200th of a second. I cropped and darkened the images as much as possible without losing focus. Some are a bit out of focus due to the nature of the shell (some are really small approx. 0.5 to 1.2 mm) and the manual focusing required to shoot the images. All images are categorized to family, then to their genus and species, so you should be able to search for them. I did not check their taxonomy in WoRMS before uploading the images to see if it is up to date; for fun I checked a few of them later (see notes above). I tried to give you apertural views and abapertural views in the same photo where possible, or two photos (one of each view). As small as everything was I had a lot harder time than I thought. A dissecting microscope with a camera might have been a better bet, but even them we would need at least 50x magnification. I hope this helps you out in your Pyramidellidae project, although compared to my regular macro images not all of the images of these micromollusks are really worthy of use.Shellnut (talk) 06:18, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Well done ! I'm working on this and I've put Iselica in the family Amathinidae (this is also confirmed by www.gastropods.com). Odostomia circinnata Adams, 1860 is Odostomia circinata (one n) and is old name (used in the 19th century) that looks like a synonym of Cingulina circinata A. Adams, 1860 (that has become in turn a synonym of Cingulina circumdata Gould, 1861 according to gastropods.com). I shall crop (and try to improve) the other images. File:Odostomia desimana.jpg cannot be used, as too much out of focus. More later. JoJan (talk) 17:11, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Odostomia diadema is a synonym of Miralda diadema (A. Adams, 1860) JoJan (talk) 18:06, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Odostomia eucosmia is a synonym of Iolaea eucosmia Dall & Bartsch, 1909 JoJan (talk) 18:26, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Odostomia limpida : I had to create a new article : valid name but not yet in WoRMS. JoJan (talk) 19:33, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

JoJan, overall what do you think of the Pyramidellidae images? Some of them were SO SMALL that they kept sticking to the end of the pin I was using to try to push them around!Shellnut (talk) 19:39, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, the ones I checked so far are of rather poor quality. But I suppose that's the best you can do with your equipment, even going to ISO 6400 to obtain the shortest possible shutter speed. Yet, there is something I cannot understand. I use a Panasonix Lumix FS30 that I bought in Barcelona last year, when, during my stay over there, my previous camera suddenly went on the blink. This is a rather cheap camera, but an excellent one. Using the macro mode, I've been able to make sharp photos without a tripod of small insects while they were moving. But, of course, these little molluscs are in another category, being so much smaller. Anyway, I've tried to improve the sharpness and contrast of your photos, while cropping them. But when the image is somewhat blurred, it is difficult to make it look sharper. I'll look at the rest tomorrow. It is bedtime now. JoJan (talk) 21:24, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

JoJan, good night! Yes, the small size of some of them contributed to the difficulty. I will try to reshoot some of those shells later on with a different camera and set up. Shells bigger than 5mm are much easier to shoot.Shellnut (talk) 21:28, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

One small advice: don't go any higher than ISO 800 when using a tripod. Higher values contribute to blurring of the image. JoJan (talk) 08:49, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Odostomia navisa : synonym of Folinella navisa (Dall & Bartsch, 1907) or Chrysallida (Ividella) navisa (Dall & Bartsch, 1907)

Pyramidella crenulata (Holmes, 1859) : synonym of Longchaeus suturalis (H. C. Lea, 1843)

Turbonilla tennicula : wrong spelling of Turbonilla tenuicula

One last advise : when uploading my own photos, I always now use the license : Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. This gives other people a greater possibility to re-use them, i.e. by a publishing company in a book (in this case they cannot use the ShareAlike, but they can give attribution with your name). I've had such requests a number of times and I've seen photos of mine used in glossy books about art, in official publications, in a number of scientific papers, and even in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica online. My name has been attributed in photos used by others on the internet more than 40,000 times (and God knows how many haven't been attributed). All this, because I used a license that others can re-use easily. I advise you to do the same and you'll be surprised what may happen. JoJan (talk) 16:10, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks JoJan! I will look for the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 from now on; I just went with the default one since I did not know better. I had borrowed a neighbor's camera on Saturday and used my lens. My wife and daughter had mine, and I was a bit unfamiliar with the electronic gadgetry on my neighbors'. I will try to reshoot the photos later this week - and if they are better I will upload them.Shellnut (talk) 17:12, 21 November 2011 (UTC)