Talk:Tunicate

message: I don't know if anyone has heard of this myth, but it might be worth including. I'm not sure I could do it and keep in tone with the article though. If no-one else has a go in a few days I might give it a shot. - FrancisTyers 18:14, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Myth

message: Okay, what I'm about to say may make me sound like an idiot, but I'm okay with that.  Last night I was watching animal planet because I couldn't go to sleep, and it said something about a fish that eats its own brain and turns into a plant, and I was like, 'whoa!'.  So today I looked it up and found this article, but I seriously can't read it.  I'm sorry, but it feels like you have to get a master's degree in science before you can read this article, so-- don't do this if it's really as stupid as it sounds-- maybe there could be a section that explains it in a nutshell, with normal people words.  I obviously couldn't make it since I have know idea what this thing is talking about, but if someone would, it'd be nice.  Sorry, I promise I'm not a valley girl!
: I can assure you such a thing is impossible. Plants and fish, they're so different. And as soon as the fish gets its brain into its mouth to 'eat it' it will die and not finish the job, not even start it. So I'm afraid that what you saw must have been misinterpretted. Also,I think you mean when a fish dies a plant grows out of it, since dead animals make floor/sea floor 'fertile' I guess. Maybe something from its brain is eaten, like a parasite?
He is right (first guy) tunicates are closely related to fish, and also digest the ganglion that is present in the tunicates larval stage.  In a sense it "eats its brain".  Also for the vanadium concentrations in tunicates, I beleive I have the answer.  Tunicates use it as a defensive secretion on predators, it is a poison of sorts.  More research could be put into this, but here are the beginnings.
59.96.103.5 (talk) 03:37, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: "Tunicates are also the only animals able to create cellulose." I think that this is quite an anusual resemblance to plants for an animal.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Draco ignoramus sophomoricus (talk • contribs) 15:18, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Ahh!

message: "Our closest invertebrate relative, the humble sea squirt, can regenerate its entire body from just tiny blood vessel fragments, scientists now report.
The entire regeneration process, which in part resembles the early stages of embryonic development, can produce an adult sea squirt in as little as a week."
From http://www.livescience.com 
Full article here: http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/070305_blood_regeneration.html
Not having any background in the natural sciences, I have no idea how to properly include this information in the article.  I hope someone can do this soon, as it seems pretty important.
24.46.61.185 23:48, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regeneration 

message: Sea squirt currently redirects here, but it's also given as a synonym for Ascidiacea, and in my non-biologist opinion it would seem likelier that people searching for sea squirts are looking for the edible ones (all Ascidiacea spp) rather than other tunicates.  Any objections to changing the redirect?
And that "sea pork" mention/reference should also be moved into Ascidiacea. Jpatokal (talk) 17:47, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Going once...  going twice... Jpatokal (talk) 11:12, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sea squirt into Ascidiacea? 

message: I removed some links:
* Tunicates, an invasive species cutting into the profits of mussel farmers, November 14, 2007 
::As a news story, could be integrated into the article, but is far too short to be a good EL.
* Ode to the Cunji, in Macquarie University Biology Bytes June 1998 
::Also a very short article, good for a reference, not EL
* Error in the Genealogy of Human
::Ditto
* Y! Image of the Creature
::A single image is a very low value EL, particularly considering the number of images in the page and the ascidians link, which has far more images.
*ANISEED A model organism database for the ascidians Ciona intestinalis and Halocynthia roretzi 
::Can't see this being hugely relevant considering it's only one class
* Squirt Alert: Science News Online, December 24, 2005
::Already embedded as a reference.  WLU (talk) 13:33, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed links 

message: Oh, on 'Blue Planet: Deep Seas' on Discovery Channel, it was mentioned that there is a deep sea member of the tunicate group that's a carnivore.  Could someone research this and update the diet bit on the main page with this weird rarity?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.69.249.94 (talk) 01:36, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Diet

message: Personal communication was listed as a general reference to this article. Because personal communications are not verifiable, they are unacceptable as Wikipedia sources. The reference was not linked to any specific statement so this calls into question the verifiability of all the unsourced material in this article. If the editor who added this reference could remove or resource any of the information tied to it, that would be very helpful. If not, perhaps a careful look at unsourced statements is warranted. --Danger (talk) 09:06, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Personal communication source 

message: The article doesn't talk about where the tunicates get their vanadium, but it has apparently gotten some chemists working, as I read here: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2008/04/08/fun_with_tunichromes.php  Someone may wish to include some of this into the article, as things develop.  Wyvern (talk) 06:12, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Very cool. The article for the class of chemicals, tunichromes, also needs creating. --Danger (talk) 16:12, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vanadium sequestration? 

message: Someone had stated that: "They were historically known as Ascadia, and are now commonly known as sea squirts". At first I thought it was a simple misspelling and corrected it. Then I realised that as it stood it didn't seem to mean anything, but as far as it might, it was wrong. I have deleted it and applied some minor corrections and refs pending anyone wishing to zap it again. If that happens, it had better be well supported. In checking my facts I found that the erroneous statement has been uncritically propagated across the Web; some people take WP material as gospel. JonRichfield (talk) 15:52, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Ascadian excision

message: http://www.pnas.org/content/102/42/15134.full
Transposon-mediated insertional mutagenesis revealed the functions of animal cellulose synthase in the ascidian Ciona intestinalis  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.61.26.216 (talk) 21:39, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Well thanks of course, but why did you not put it into the text? Meanwhile, perhaps it is just as well, because I got into the matter when I saw the citation request had been removed, and found a few of my own, then I began to read the text, and it is a horror show. It isn't my field, but I have spent half the day tidying ten percent of the mess! Any other suckers out there with nothing better to do, who would like to improve the article?   JonRichfield (talk) 19:55, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: cellulose link

message: In some classes, the adults remain pelagic (swimming or drifting in the open sea), although their larvae undergo similar metamorphoses to a higher or lower degree.
Um, does this mean that the adults never mature, but their larvae do? Or what? And how can there be "degrees" of metamorphosis? And the article also says, The larval form is not capable of feeding, so does this mean that a non-metamorphosing adult never eats its whole life? The statement is slightly confusing. (I'm a laywoman, btw.) I guess it sorta makes sense, it's just not the most clear thing and could stand to be reworded so you don't have to think about it so much to understand it. StoryMakerEchidna (talk) 19:26, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-confusing sentence about pelagic adults 

message: It currently is contested whether tunicates or lancelets are the most closely related to vertebrates , and hence some sources are treating tunicates as a separate phylum from cordates. (Of course, this can't really be resolved fully before the question of hybrid sea-urchin/chordate origins..) Cesiumfrog (talk) 11:53, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  sub-phylum 

message: The main page says "that although a tunicate is an invertebrate, its larva (pictured) may have a notochord and resemble a small tadpole?"
But this article and the chordate article states it does have a notochord. Please correct the quote on the main page to reflect scientific definitions. If an organism is defined by a characteristic, chordata, for example, please do not rewrite that characteristic. Bad science!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.147.88.25 (talk) 18:33, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bad main page hook -- bad science 

message: This paragraph is about the study, not the classification of tunicates, and this information should not dwarf that section. Tunicate classification is very important to the study of the evolution of animals, and this section of the article should reflect that. If this is added back to the article, it should put the study in its scientific context and address the relationship of the study to current classifications of tunicates and animals as all the secondary sources do.
:"Sea squirts have been involved in a controversy about the extent to which cross-species gene transfer and hybridization have influenced animal evolution. In 1990, Donald I. Williamson of the University of Liverpool (U.K.) fertilised sea squirt (Ascidia mentula) eggs with sea urchin (Echinus esculentus) sperm resulting in fertile adults that resembled urchins, but Michael W. Hart of Simon Fraser University failed to find sea-squirt DNA in tissue samples from the supposed hybrids. Williamson claims to have repeated the experiment with sea urchin eggs and sea squirt sperm, producing sea urchin larvae which developed into squirt-like juveniles.Williamson, D.I. (in press). Larval transfer: experimental hybrids. In: Margulis, L. and Asikainen, C.A. (editors), Chimeras and Consciousness: Evolution of Sensory Systems. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Co. (Cit. in: Williamson, D. I.; Vickers, S. E. Larval Transfer: A recent evolutionary theory. Ms. submitted to American Scientist.) These findings have been disputed. A multi-taxon molecular study in 2010 suggested that sea squirts are descended from a hybrid between a chordate and a likely extinct protostome ancestor which took place at a time before the diversification of nematodes and arthropods. This study also examined whether there was any evidence of a sea urchin and tunicate hybridization event that could possibly explain the distribution of genes in modern sea squirts. None could be found."
:
--(AfadsBad (talk) 15:34, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see your point. If there is genuine ambiguity about which phylum tunicates belong to (and evidence that tunicates may be a hybrid of multiple phyla) then this seems a legitimate topic, highly notable, directly relevant to the "classification" section, well verified by multiple in-line citations to mainstream sources, well-deserving of a paragraph in the article (and its exclusion would misleadingly bias the article). If you think the material is wrong, do you have a reliable counter-source to support your POV? Cesiumfrog (talk) 05:14, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this section should be put back into the article under the heading (or subheading)...Controversy about the phylogeny. Since an editor feels that the section "should put the study in its scientific context and address the relationship of the study to current classifications of tunicates and animals" the thing for that editor to do is to go ahead and make some attempt to add that info to the section. Wikipedia is based on collaboration. Cutting a whole section of an article out because it is considered incomplete is counterproductive, and is antithetical to the spirit of Wikipedia, which is by definition, 'a work in progress'. And note that this is a GA article, not an FA; it does not claim to be complete. Invertzoo (talk) 16:03, 11 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Update: I tweaked the prose of the section a little and put it back into the article again, under a special subheading. Anyone who thinks this section is unsuitable because it does not reflect the whole balanced picture on this research topic, is welcome to add to the section. Either that, or perhaps even better, someone could start an entire new article specifically on that topic (as quite a bit could be written on it) and then after that article is created, we could link this article to that one. Invertzoo (talk) 12:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tunicate classification is not a single controversial study 

message: Since there seems to be some disagreement about the subphylum name, could we have it here on the talk page rather than multiple edits? After looking into it, WORMS lists Tunicata as valid and Urochordata as invalid based on Margulis, L.; Schwartz, K.V. (1998). Five Kingdoms: an illustrated guide to the Phyla of life on earth. 3rd edition. Freeman: New York, NY (USA). . xx, 520 pp. This record was updated 2005.
ITIS is the other way around, citing M. Ruggiero & D. Gordon, eds. 2013. Consensus Management Hierarchy for the ITIS & Species2000 Catalogue of Life, with a note "See Wells & Houston, eds. (1998), who use Tunicata rather than Urochordata. Both terms are in use, but apparently most specialists currently use Tunicata."
I just checked what I own, and every single book and identification resource lists Urochordata, which may be where the confusion comes from. The dates of them range from 1977 to 2013. What happens when conflicting resources arise like this? Esoxidtalk•contribs 19:19, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: In these sort of situations on Wikipedia we have to work out which source we consider to be the most reliable, and use that one. WoRMS is not infallible (no source is) but most of WoRMS is often updated, and it is staffed by many of the world's leading taxonomists. (In WikiProject Gastropods, we use WoRMS for all our marine taxa). It seems to me to be perfectly reasonable to follow WoRMS in this regard also. However, I see that the WoRMS entry for Tunicata was last updated 10 years ago, by Karen Sanamyan of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Kamchatka Branch of the Pacific Institute of Geography. His email address is on WoRMS, if anyone would like to write and ask him if his opinion is still the same. Invertzoo (talk) 21:45, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

text: In case User:Esoxid has not made himself clear ("ITIS is the other way around,..."): I just checked the link given as ref, and ITIS currently has "Urochordata" as "valid" and "Tunicata" as "invalid". I'm updating the article accordingly. --BjKa (talk) 08:52, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subphylum name? 

message: This "controversy" has no legs. Are we to add every idiotic musing anybody has ever had about a subject to said subject's wikipedia page? It was a hypothesis put forth by a random dude in a non-peer-reviewed outlet run by predatory vanity publishers, a guy who doesn't even study tunicates for that matter. It's a hypothesis that does not make any biological sense and was instantly refuted by the several tunicate genomes sequenced, assembled, and freely available starting in 2002, and the tens of thousands of tunicate genes sequenced and analyzed since. This massive amount of data all points to a single origin of tunicates from a common ancestor that also gave rise to the vertebrates.
Were there ever any studies to refute this "controversial" claim? No. Why? Well there was no data to back the claim in the first place, so why should others waste their time getting hard data when the burden of proof should be on the one making the illogical claim in the first place? It's like claiming Elvis lives in my basement, putting that on the Elvis Wikipedia page until the press come over to my house and write articles proving my claims were a bunch of baloney.
Contrary to what people might imagine, nobody has anything to "lose" from a controversial claim in this debate. There is nothing to gain from "suppressing" opposing view points. This is sea squirt research we are talking about. Not exactly high stakes. In fact, every single tunicate biologist would jump at the opportunity to follow up on something exciting like this could be, if it were at all grounded in reality. The best way to make a name for yourself in biology is to prove dogma wrong. If a whole new avenue of research opens up, you can get funding and keep your career going. People would have every reason in the world to want to believe a new controversial theory, or at least follow it up. The fact nobody has done so only speaks to how infantile these ideas are. I mean, where do you even begin? It's biologically akin to claiming water is not wet. How do you even work to refute that without looking like a total sucker? So, the conspiracy theories floating here about how these ideas are being silenced because they are "controversial" is laughable. How about, these ideas are being ignored because they sound like the answers a five year-old would write on a university-level exam. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.122.60.133 (talk) 21:21, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I do basically understand what you are saying 128.122.60.133, and why you are saying it. However, I softened the language in that section of the article, so it does not have quite so much "Point of View", which we must always try to avoid on Wikipedia. The reason why I think it is worth including at least a mention of this dubious "Research", is because it got a lot of press coverage at the time, so some people will have heard of it, and will be at least somewhat curious about it. Invertzoo (talk) 12:35, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

text: Williamson's ideas sound outlandish simply because they go against received wisdom. Whether his research stands to scrutiny is another matter. Lots of research doesn't. It's part of the scientific process to let it go on. Even if there is nothing at all to Williamson's hypothesis, it's still valuable for the out-of-the-box perspective that may inspire others, whereas silencing it gains nothing. Take theoretical Physics, where ideas are put forth decades before they may even be tested. Yes, some may be grieved to see what they consider utter cluelessness given dignity that orthodox hard working scientists don't get - but that's the thing, life's not fair and often those undeserving get the spotlight. *If* hybrids from different phyla turn out to possible, then the research has to start somewhere. Evidence won't be found if it is not looked for. 2.81.201.152 (talk) 22:15, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Be that as it may, Wikipedia is not the place for outlandish ideas that may one day be vindicated. 73.223.96.73 (talk) 06:21, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Controversy" 

message: I was reading through the related articles and claims as to the number of species do not match. Articles state that sea squirts are one of several types of Tunicate. The Tunicate article says there are 2150 species of tunicate. The Sea squirt article says there are 2300 species of sea squirts. This is clearly illogical, there must be more tunicate species than sea squirts if the tunicates includes te sea squirts?  Carlwev  13:30, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The subphylum Tunicata includes the class Ascidea, the sea squirts. As to how many species there are, it is all a matter of what authority you ask. The sea is a relatively poorly explored environment and very little is known about many of the species of marine organisms, especially deep-water species. Also, taxonomy is often being revised, what was thought to be two species are shown to be only one, or what was regarded as two subspecies are designated as two separate species. Then there are new discoveries, and other species may become extinct, so there is no precise answer. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:43, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: How many species?

message: redirects to Ascidiacea, while ,  and  redirect to Tunicate. I have propose that the latter three be retargetted so all point to Ascidiacea - you are invited to the discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 September 17#Sea squirt. Please leave any comments there to keep discussion in one place. Thryduulf (talk) 01:10, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sea squirt redirects 

message: The section Taxonomy ("About 2,150 species") and Classification ("The Tunicata contain roughly 3,051 described species") contradict each other. The latter has a literature reference, but I don't know what the more accurate number is.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.230.53.88 (talk) 15:13, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: WoRMS gives 3079 accepted species to the higher number is likely more accurate. I can't verify the 3,051 in the cited reference (which is 2004) but that is pretty good agreement. Perhaps stating there are about 3000 species and using both references would be best. —  Jts1882 | talk  17:23, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Changed to "About 3,000" which seems to be the currently accepted figure. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:16, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of tunicate species 

message: The picture on this page with the pretty blue tunicates is indicated to be of Clavelina moluccensis, but is also used on the page for C. coerulea. It can't be both. Suttkus (talk) 07:15, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blue bell? 

message: as far as is known, tunicates are the only animals known that can make cellulose; this is so unusual it really deservers its own section
also here are two papers which discuss phylogeny; I would take the second as the latest word from the specialists
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3306355/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10325964/  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.245.17.105 (talk) 19:34, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  cellulose is so odd needs to be highlighted