![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||
|
Whoa! Whoa! Oh man! Neither of the examples given is a member of the Insectivore order!! Dear god! john 07:22 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Yes, they are. Looking at the history, the original article does seem to have been simply about animals that eat insects. You added the material about the order insectivora about a week ago, no? john 07:40 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)
(All of the above pasted in by me, Tannin, from its original location at Talk:Insectivore because it makes more sense over here.
Since the article title is only about the scientific order, shouldn't we separate the "insectivore" part back to its original place at insectivore and leaves cross-references on both articles? -- Menchi 14:12 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)
The interrelationships of the traditional Insectivora are uncertain but it mignt yet be monophyletic. Nowadays Lipotyphla seems to be more commonly used though. One morphological analysis found the Insectovorans to be a grade not a clade, but still not supporting relationships of Lipotyphlans with certain non-Insectivoran mammals.
Even if Wikipedia's overall classification can hang around and wait for the next edition of MSW, articles can't. Articles aren't straitjacketed into the taxonomy. They have to reflect the current state of research without bias even if it's at odds with whatever classification we've adopted officially. We can and do reference primary sources in articles, we have a cladogram that's referenced to recent primary research that puts hedgehogs in with shrews — i.e. traditional Lipotyphla, only subdivided differently — and somehow we have to square that with an article which asserts (mostly on the basis of earlier and controversial studies) that this grouping is taxonomically extinct.
What MSW3 has to say is actually far from done and dusted. It acknowledges that Soricomorpha and Erinaceomorpha are "commonly" put together as Insectivora/Lipotyphla and that the separation in the 3rd edition is provisional. After surveying a number of papers, it concludes: "At this stage there exist many conflicting views and no consistent phylogeny of the members of the former Insectivora." This does not inspire confidence that MSW3's classification reflects even a rough consensus of taxonomic opinion. And although it was published in 2005, it doesn't even reference Roca et al (2004). One secondary source to set against MSW3 is Benton's Vertebrate Palaeontology (2005) which continues to affirm a Lipotyphla with hedgehogs in it.
Given the tentative nature of MSW3's three-year-old re-classification, what this article should not do is to say that the grouping Insectivora is as dead as the dinosaurs. That would be a massive overstatement. Fair enough if you want it to set out MSW3's proposal right at the start. But it should be presented as a scheme, not the accepted scheme, since we also have to summarise the research which stands against it. And the fact that we have a field in a state of flux — no consensus that all these families do form a clade, but also no consensus that they don't.
By the way, Wikipedia's classification goes with Benton for much of the higher-level taxonomy of both vertebrates and mammals, and then drops Benton for MSW3 at the ordinal level, so we are already using a patchwork of authoritative sources, rather than a single 'standard'. Gnostrat ( talk) 00:36, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Is there a cite for the "order" being abandoned? This issue is not clearly explained in the article.-- ZayZayEM ( talk) 09:12, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
I think this entry should be merged with that for Eulipotyphla, which is very sparse. Divers Alarums ( talk) 22:20, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
opentreeoflife came online recently with a draft all-encompassing tree of cellular life. Their node for Laurasiatheria clearly has Insectivora as one of two sub-clades. Insectivora = (Solenodontidae + (Erinaceidae + [Soricidae + Talpidae]) + Nesophontidae). The other toplevel sub-clade (unnamed) = ((Carnivora + Pholidota) + (Chiroptera + [Cetartiodactyla + Perissodactyla])) IMO this shows Insectivora not just to be less extinct then dinosaurs but probably a legitimate clade per recent research. Perhaps the word has changed meaning, where Insectivora defined as any mammal that eats insects is obsolete but Insectivora in this specific cladogram is quite valid. Perhaps this article should distinguish the old ecological-niche definition from the new cladistic definition, stating that only the old definition is obsolete. 198.144.192.45 ( talk) 07:05, 24 December 2014 (UTC) Twitter.Com/CalRobert (Robert Maas)
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||
|
Whoa! Whoa! Oh man! Neither of the examples given is a member of the Insectivore order!! Dear god! john 07:22 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Yes, they are. Looking at the history, the original article does seem to have been simply about animals that eat insects. You added the material about the order insectivora about a week ago, no? john 07:40 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)
(All of the above pasted in by me, Tannin, from its original location at Talk:Insectivore because it makes more sense over here.
Since the article title is only about the scientific order, shouldn't we separate the "insectivore" part back to its original place at insectivore and leaves cross-references on both articles? -- Menchi 14:12 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)
The interrelationships of the traditional Insectivora are uncertain but it mignt yet be monophyletic. Nowadays Lipotyphla seems to be more commonly used though. One morphological analysis found the Insectovorans to be a grade not a clade, but still not supporting relationships of Lipotyphlans with certain non-Insectivoran mammals.
Even if Wikipedia's overall classification can hang around and wait for the next edition of MSW, articles can't. Articles aren't straitjacketed into the taxonomy. They have to reflect the current state of research without bias even if it's at odds with whatever classification we've adopted officially. We can and do reference primary sources in articles, we have a cladogram that's referenced to recent primary research that puts hedgehogs in with shrews — i.e. traditional Lipotyphla, only subdivided differently — and somehow we have to square that with an article which asserts (mostly on the basis of earlier and controversial studies) that this grouping is taxonomically extinct.
What MSW3 has to say is actually far from done and dusted. It acknowledges that Soricomorpha and Erinaceomorpha are "commonly" put together as Insectivora/Lipotyphla and that the separation in the 3rd edition is provisional. After surveying a number of papers, it concludes: "At this stage there exist many conflicting views and no consistent phylogeny of the members of the former Insectivora." This does not inspire confidence that MSW3's classification reflects even a rough consensus of taxonomic opinion. And although it was published in 2005, it doesn't even reference Roca et al (2004). One secondary source to set against MSW3 is Benton's Vertebrate Palaeontology (2005) which continues to affirm a Lipotyphla with hedgehogs in it.
Given the tentative nature of MSW3's three-year-old re-classification, what this article should not do is to say that the grouping Insectivora is as dead as the dinosaurs. That would be a massive overstatement. Fair enough if you want it to set out MSW3's proposal right at the start. But it should be presented as a scheme, not the accepted scheme, since we also have to summarise the research which stands against it. And the fact that we have a field in a state of flux — no consensus that all these families do form a clade, but also no consensus that they don't.
By the way, Wikipedia's classification goes with Benton for much of the higher-level taxonomy of both vertebrates and mammals, and then drops Benton for MSW3 at the ordinal level, so we are already using a patchwork of authoritative sources, rather than a single 'standard'. Gnostrat ( talk) 00:36, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Is there a cite for the "order" being abandoned? This issue is not clearly explained in the article.-- ZayZayEM ( talk) 09:12, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
I think this entry should be merged with that for Eulipotyphla, which is very sparse. Divers Alarums ( talk) 22:20, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
opentreeoflife came online recently with a draft all-encompassing tree of cellular life. Their node for Laurasiatheria clearly has Insectivora as one of two sub-clades. Insectivora = (Solenodontidae + (Erinaceidae + [Soricidae + Talpidae]) + Nesophontidae). The other toplevel sub-clade (unnamed) = ((Carnivora + Pholidota) + (Chiroptera + [Cetartiodactyla + Perissodactyla])) IMO this shows Insectivora not just to be less extinct then dinosaurs but probably a legitimate clade per recent research. Perhaps the word has changed meaning, where Insectivora defined as any mammal that eats insects is obsolete but Insectivora in this specific cladogram is quite valid. Perhaps this article should distinguish the old ecological-niche definition from the new cladistic definition, stating that only the old definition is obsolete. 198.144.192.45 ( talk) 07:05, 24 December 2014 (UTC) Twitter.Com/CalRobert (Robert Maas)