Talk:Trimeresurus popeiorum

message: During the past few days, repeated attempts have been made to "amend" this article. Although it would seem that the responsible party invested some time in making the changes, they cannot be allowed to stand, mainly because they do not keep to the taxonomy being used for this series of articles (Viperidae). The publication by Vogel, David and Pauwels (2004) may put forth some interesting taxonomic ideas, but for now their opinions are their own. Their research and findings may be mentioned here as supplementary information (just as many such papers are mentioned in these articles), but there are good reasons not to adopt the taxonomy of every such paper that is published.
All encyclopedia projects, including Wikipedia, are necessarily conservative. This is because it is impractical for us to keep up with all of the latest scientific research; it would be an endless task to constantly be rewriting so many articles. What's more, the various taxonomies often disagree, which means that the overall synonymy would soon break down and duplicate articles would begin to appear under competing names. That's why this series of articles follows the taxonomy for snakes available through the ITIS online database: it's based on McDiarmid, Campbell and Touré's 1999 checklist Snake Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, vol. 1, as well as their ongoing work. I have had contact with a number of herpetologists and they all agree that this taxonomy is the most heavily researched and authoritative available for snakes. That's not surprising when you notice the list of 21 reviewers at the beginning of the book -- all senior figures in the field. Of course they don't always agree (I know that for a fact), but the point is that this book reflects a broad consensus. There's been nothing like it for snakes since Boulenger's three-volume Catalogue of the Snakes of the British Museum (1893-1896).
It could be that Dr. McDiarmid and his colleagues will eventually accept Vogel, David and Pauwels' 2004 paper, but that's not all all certain. Trimeresurus is a large and diverse group that I'm sure will be split up at some point; McDiarmid also mentions this, but opted for a conservative approach until additional information becomes available. After all, you don't want to split up a group like this one way based on flimsy evidence, only to see a paper published the next day that provides far better reasons to split it up another way.
Aside from all that, I'd be willing to let some of the changes stand (Habitat, Diet) if they were properly referenced. The rest, though, cannot be allowed because of the conflicting taxonomy. --Jwinius 13:16, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Jaap, your long note prompted a look at the history of edits and changes. From the outside it appears that the popeiorum (for the plural Popes, Mr. and Mrs. Pope) should indeed stand per priority and fact that it was incorrectly emended. If the more recent Zootaxa reference uses popeiorum, it really should be given due consideration. Regarding the splits of the species complex, it could again perhaps be accomodated into a new section if reliable sources are cited. Species splits are definitely not so troublesome to the taxonomic status and do not involve too much work in the taxobox at least (unlike the way it is going with birds and complete family breakups!). And the anonymous author should really get a proper login name and hopefully contribute more substantially. Shyamal 15:45, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps popeiorum would really be the more conservative choice. There does not seem to be any attempt at genus creation. That would certainly be something that may be given time (if it happened). The Zootaxa paper is not too recent at 2004 . It may be quite important to accept the raising of these subspecies to higher status and to make this more well known via wikipedia, since this can have very important conservation consequences and especially so in South Asia and Southeast Asia. I am sure the new content can be legitimately accomodated with suitable formatting and copy edits. Shyamal 04:13, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Taxonomic conflict

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