Talk:Taxonomic rank

message: a) the ending "-odd" is, well, odd and almost certainly wrong (I never saw it before)
b) "Infrafamily" (botany) = "tribe" (zoology)? 
Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 17:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't know about botanical infrafamilies, but in zoology tribes and infrafamilies are distinct. And, yes, the ending is -odd and I've supplied the reference. I suspect someone realised they were running out of Latin/Greek terminations and decided it would be cool to form them from Welsh or something. Gnostrat (talk) 16:56, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Infrafamily

message: I'm proposing that the Taxonomic ranks section of Linnaean taxonomy be merged in. Listing all the ranks in the latter article is an exercise in the superfluous. Once the discrepancies between that list and the one in this article have been ironed out, the full table can be consolidated here and, perhaps, replaced in Linnaean taxonomy with a simple summary of the main ranks. This would prepare a shorter and more manageable Linnaean taxonomy for eventual merger with Scientific classification. I am hoping the merge template will also attract some notice to the need for expert attention over here.
I can't see any need for maintaining separate short articles for the zoological and botanical ranks, either. The two systems have far more in common than divides them, some material appears in both articles, and they are better treated together for comparison. (The articles are misleadingly titled as well, since the botanical system is also used in mycology and the zoological one also applies to protozoa.) So I may be bold and merge those in even sooner. Gnostrat (talk) 04:00, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Merged. --Snek01 (talk) 21:40, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

text: If memory serves, this article contains material that was moved from the other two as they were overlong and cluttered. We had long and involved discussions about which articles to merge with which: see Talk:Biological classification#Two Proposed Changes and the two sections which follow that. Linnaean taxonomy is not the same as biological classification: it is one system of biological classification, and alternatives have been proposed, so it's probably best maintained as a separate article (like Cladistics, which can be applied within a Linnaean hierarchy of ranks but can also treat them as irrelevant). Gnostrat (talk) 00:59, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge

message: I'm an interested amateur, but not trained in this field. In copy-editing Theraphosidae, I became aware of a conflict between the term relating it to Mygalomorphae (sub-order) and infraorder as used in the top section of Dipluridae. Can I ask whether someone with the necessary education/expertise can sort this one out, please. Cheers Bjenks (talk) 07:11, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is that trained biologists don't know where terms like "infraorder" are coming from, and Wikipedia doesn't define them. Wiktionary definitions sound spurious. "Infra" is used to mean "within", so "infrageneric" doesn't mean at the rank of "infragenus", it means at any rank lower than genus.Nadiatalent (talk) 02:00, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Correction, I see that infra and parv are defined in the zoological code. This is clearly a major confusion between zoological and botanical codes. "Infrageneric" in the botanical code, means any subdivision of a genus, "infraspecific" means any subdivision of a species, etc. No wonder the Biocode effort floundered! Nadiatalent (talk) 03:32, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, but they need to try again!  That said, the terms aren't as confused as they seem. "Infrageneric" is an adjective, meaning "below genus rank"; "infragenus" is a rank meaning "rank below genus". I forget how "infragenus" and "subgenus" relate, and can't be arsed to go check, but I'm skeptical it can't be sorted out. The OR problem we do want to watch out for is the application of zoological ranks to plants, etc., and vice versa. Even within botany, some terms only apply in mycology or whatever, and not generally.  I can see that some enthused persons might want to go add things like forma specialis as a parameter in zoological taxoboxes, but it would be wrong.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:15, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  'sub-' vs 'infra' 

message: Is "alliance" a taxonomic rank? I see it on this template after subtribe but before genus. This is not mentioned in the taxonomic rank list on this article. If it is a rank, it should be added to this article. If not it should be taken off the template. Kittenono (talk) 22:12, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've taken it out, but there are more problems than just this one. I've commented about "infra" above, and a bit more at Template talk:Taxonomic ranks. The problem seems to be widespread within Wikipedia and Wiktionary. I'd like to see these pages trimmed to just the ranks that are recognized in the botanical, zoological, and bacteriological codes of nomenclature! Nadiatalent (talk) 02:08, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem with doing that is that it removes information people need.  What we should have is a list of the formal ranks (not necessarily even in this article, though it seems a good place for it), and another showing the total hierarchy scheme, including the informal taxa.  I've been reading this stuff for something like 20 years and I still learn new things about obscure taxonomic levels pretty frequently. This info should be centralized here. It shouldn't take a WP reader two years of digging around in phytopathology reports and biology dictionaries to learn that a "biological race" is the exact same thing as a "physiological race" phytopathology, which is not a "physiologic race", but equivalent to a "forma specialis" (yet with different naming style), and at the same level as other modern uses of "race" in biology, and they're all informal, and they're all more-or-less at the same level as subspecies, but not 100% of the time [deep breath].  We're supposed to do that work for them, and that mess can compressed into a simple, concise expression here pretty easily in our longer chart.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:08, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

text: I have often heard the term "alliance" used in discussions of orchids, and it appears on the Taxonomy of the Orchidaceae page extensively, as well as in numerous taxoboxes for orchids; in this context, it seems to be a rank between subtribe and genus, as the taxonomic rank template formerly indicated.  Some quick Googling dug up an article that appears to use the term in the context of genetic studies within the Orchidaceae: [].  I worry that the removal of alliances from the template may have been premature. Does anyone know of other plant families that have "alliances" as well? Nighthawk4211 (talk) 21:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Grex is also specific to orchids, last I looked. People with an aim to keeping the list here simple should probably not be removing field specific taxonomic details from infoboxes. The needs of the infoboxes and the needs of this article are not the same.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  11:08, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alliance? 

message: Forma specialis is not equivalent to subspecies, though it is infraspecific. I've seen multiple f. sp. identified below the subspecies level (but the source in question isn't much use here, because the entire genus in that case keeps getting overhauled, with a lot of mergers between entire species, with some even jumping genera). I have yet to find any sources using it lower still, so it appears that it needs to go as the line in the chart immediately below subspecies, or as an "Informal: ..." addition at the same level. It's equivalent to race (biology) (zoology, botany). Race may be given more specifically as physiological race (a.k.a. "biological race" in some older sources, but not to be confused with physiologic race which = cryptic species), in mycology and phytopathology. (I have not found physiological race elsewhere, and Academic Pr. Dict. of Sci. & Tech. limits it to mycology.) There are other more specific forms of race, but they're at the same level as the basic term race, which is equivalent to f. sp.   are informal. Of these, only forma specialis is interpolated into the scientific name (after a "f. sp."), and it follows the Latin rules for epithets: "Puccinia graminis f. sp. avenae", an example from Forma specialis and Stem rust. By contrast, race (of whatever sort) is given after the binomial, and usually after the word "race", with no special markup; it is arbitrary and often consists of an alphanumeric code: "Podosphaera xanthii race S" (from Cohen 2004, cited at Race (biology)).  What often happens is phytopathologists identify and label races at a much faster clip than mycologists can describe, classify, and semi-formally name them. It's possible for the same organism to have both a race designation and a f. sp. epithet, and even for a population with an f. sp. epithet to be later reorganized in race taxonomy, e.g. split or merged.  This "fast-paced" use of race is different from the use in zoology, which is generally referring to geographically, morphologically, or just chromosomally distinct populations within a species that cannot be or simply have not been more specifically described and classified; it seems rarely applied to mammals and other large animals, but is often still used to informally and perhaps temporarily classify populations of insects adapted to specific food sources or other environmental factors within the same area (i.e., it's not always geographic at all). There's also historic use of "race" to refer to domestic breeds, but this has been abandoned in English.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:58, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Forma specialis and race 

message: I am not sure I like some aspects of this figure. The name vulpes is not the species. It should be called the specific name to avoid confusion. The caption also has some issues. It is not really a graph, and I am not sure what "earlier life forms related to the red fox" means.Michaplot (talk) 18:06, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I would keep "species" but change the name to V. vulpes or Vulpes vulpes. Certainly just vulpes is quite wrong here. I also agree about "earlier life forms related to the red fox". What it shows is how the red fox is classified. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:42, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  Now fixed as per the above comments. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:02, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

text: I also have concerns, and setting aside the question "Why is it an inverted rainbow-striped triangle?" that will just have me listed as a homophobe (No honestly, everybody at work assumes I'm looking at a completely different subject on Wiki right now...not taxonomic ranks), but I feel something better than Vulpes Vulpes might help to distinguish things a little further... AMightierHeart (talk) 05:35, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Figure Issues 

message: I suspect some original research or regional PoV here.  The pronunciations listed seem to presenting an American approach only, and maybe just someone's prescriptive and strange guesses at Americanization.  I don't think I've ever in my life heard someone say Hominini with /aɪnaɪ/ at the end, for example.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:09, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Terminations of names" pronuncation OR? 

message: Is it worth mentioning that a cultivar/cultigen can be more specific than a species? Though I'm not sure I'm comparing apples to apples here, if it fits in taxonomy.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.75.106.98 (talk) 13:36, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beyond Species 

message: I don't claim any authority in this field, but it's always seemed to me that the fundamental problem with ranks is that even the enormous list given in this article is finite. As knowledge increases, successively finer distinctions can be made, so that categorization is effectively infinite, and merely inserting another rank intermediate between two existing ranks is in the long run only a stopgap.
This isn't (to me) a problem confined to classifying extinct and basal forms, as implied by the discussion of the boundary paradox, but is a function of the inherent complexity of life compared with a human-made, hierarchical system of classification. To me, this is where a cladistic approach scores, in that the tree of a clade can have an infinite number of levels. I don't feel the article clearly alludes to that.
As I say, I'm not an expert, and wouldn't attempt to edit. But it does seem that rank-based taxonomy and cladistics are fundamentally at odds, and if relationships between forms are best determined on an evolutionary basis (which seems to be broadly accepted) then a clade-based approach by definition handles the situation better. Chrismorey (talk) 19:17, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: What is your suggestion for improvement of the Taxonomic rank article?--Kevmin § 20:02, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Problems' section 

message: The listing in the  section ends with the clade rank below the species rank. It seems to me that clade is not in itself a rank. I'm requesting the input of someone more knowledgeable about this field. Matthyis (talk) 08:09, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, "clade" isn't a rank, but a property of a group of organisms and any rank (or none). I've removed it. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:35, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clade Rank in 'All Ranks' Section 

message: Nutrition 197.237.212.35 (talk) 07:45, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biology