Wikipedia:WikiProject Protista

WikiProject Protista

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Wikipedia logo filled with silhouettes of various protists

Mycetozoa, Kunstformen der Natur.

Welcome to WikiProject Protista! This is a collaboration group created to improve Wikipedia's coverage and organization of information about the eukaryotic organisms known as protists or protoctists, from which all other eukaryotes have evolved: plants, fungi and animals.

This page and its subpages contain their suggestions and various resources. It is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians interested in the topic. If you would like to help, please add yourself as a participant in the project, inquire on the talk page, and take on an open task from the to-do list. You can also add a task where work is needed on protist articles.

Scope and goals

This project's scope is all articles regarding all eukaryotic organisms known as protists, as well as the science of protistology and the evolution of eukaryotes. The project provides a central location for all participants interested. Our objective is to improve the quality of every protist taxon page, and add the corresponding {{Automatic taxobox}} to describe its relationship with other eukaryote groups. The concrete long-term goals are:

• Create pages for every protist taxon and improve them until at least start-level quality.
• Create the corresponding taxonomy templates.
• Maintain the taxonomy of protists as accurately as possible.

For more informaton, this page shows important articles that fall under our scope.

Notability

Code of nomenclature

The two existing codes that regulate eukaryotic nomenclature (ICZN for zoology, ICNafp for botany) often come into conflict with protists. Historically, the ICZN was the authority for all protozoa, while the ICNafp regulated algae and fungus-like protists such as slime molds, but these too are frequently treated as protozoa, and some protozoa are occasionally treated as algae. Because these groups are evolutionarily intertwined, there is no solid barrier which firmly separates zoology from botany in the realm of protists. Instead, protistologists tend to implement their own 'code', where the authority is written the following way: Taxon Author, Year. For example, a new combination (i.e. a species transferred to a new genus) would be written as:

Urceolus cyclostomus (Stein, 1878) Mereschkowsky, 1877

basionym: Phialonema cyclostomum Stein, 1878

This differs from both the botanical code, which omits the year of publication, and the zoological code, which omits the authors of new combinations in favor of retaining only the author of the original species name, which becomes later a junior synonym. For example:

Aprostocetus hagenowii (Ratzeburg, 1852)

basionym: Entedon hagenowii Ratzeburg, 1852

Dinema polybulbon (Sw.) Lindl.

basionym: Epidendrum polybulbon Sw.

Article design

The default layout for new articles about a taxon is suggested as such:

Lead. A brief summary of all relevant information displayed in the article. Must contain an {{automatic taxobox}} (or {{speciesbox}} for species) with an image of the organism, its correct scientific name, its synonyms, and a map with its geographical range if possible.

Description. A section on what the organism looks like, its cellular structure and behavior at an individual level, its size, its unique characteristics. May include the various subgroups and their own characteristics that distinguish them from each other. If there is enough information, it can be changed for a Biology section where every single aspect of their biology is explained (e.g., cell structure, nutrition, reproduction, life cycle, biochemistry).

Ecology. A section on the organism and its relationship with the environment, the ecosystem that it inhabits, its geographical distribution, and pathogenicity in the case of parasites.

Systematics. A section on the taxonomic history of the organism: when and where the organism was discovered, by whom, how the scientific community responded since then, and how its classification changed over the years. Must include a summarized systematic classification of the inner groups. An etymology subsection is encouraged.

Evolution. A section on the evolutionary history of the group. A cladogram depicting the phylogeny of the organism can be helpful. Ideally it includes the fossil record and the evolution of characters within the group, as well as the evolutionary relationships to other groups.

Article title

If the name of an article is a taxon, there are several factors to consider which name should be applied. Below is a useful key to decide the naming of a taxon article, starting with the question: is the taxon monotypic?

1. Yes. Is the taxon a genus with only one species?
   1. Yes. Is the name of the protist genus shared with a genus from a different kingdom (i.e. animal, plant, fungus, bacteria)?
      1. Yes. The article should be named after the species. Example: Orcadia riedeli not Orcadia (protist).
      2. No. The article should be named after the genus, even if higher ranks are also monotypic. Example: Olisthodiscus (genus) not Olisthodiscophyceae (class).
   2. No (this would be a family with only one genus, or an order with only one family, or a class with only one order, or so on and so forth, but without a monotypic genus). The article should be named after the most popular taxon rank used in scientific literature. Example: Vampyrellida (order) not Vampyrellidea (class).
2. No. Does the taxon have multiple different synonyms, none of which have been officially rejected?
   1. Yes. The article should be named after the most popular name in scientific literature. Example: Holomycota instead of Nucletmycea. This also applies if the most popular usage is an informal name (useful for taxa with many different formal names): ochrophyte instead of Ochrophyta or Ochrophytina, centrohelid instead of Centrohelea or Centroplasthelida, and so on.
   2. No. Apply the only known name, or the only officially accepted name.

All other possible names should be turned into redirects to the main article.

Participants

Please feel free to add yourself here, and to indicate any areas of particular interest, if you would like to join the project.

1. ☽ Snoteleks ☾ Biologist, cladogram creator, phylogeny enthusiast. Protists are pretty much my special interest. 16:40, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
2. Edward-Woodrow :) _[talk] Happy to help where I can; I normally work on arthropods but I'd like to branch out. 14:37, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
3. Animalculum PostDoc working on evolution of metabolism and symbiosis in anaerobic protists, algae, and bacteria.
4. Fritzmann, usually work with plants but branching out to reach more of the Tree of Life
5. Cyanochic, I research cyanobacteria, diatoms, and endosymbiosis and microscopy is a main hobby of mine. Happy to branch out into other protists.

You may place {{User WikiProject Protista}} on your user page to display the following userbox:

This user is a participant in
WikiProject Protista.

Recognized content

Further information: Wikipedia:WikiProject Protista/Recognized content

The following articles within the scope of this WikiProject have been rated and reviewed as Good Articles or Featured Articles.

Barbeyella minutissima • Cafileria • Chrompodellid • Eukaryote • Holozoa • Hyalospheniidae • Katablepharid • Myxogastria • Ochrophyte • Parvilucifera • Plasmodium knowlesi • Plasmodium • Postelsia • Rapaza • Slime mold • Stramenopile • Syssomonas • Telonemia • Urceolus • Vampyrellida

Assessment and statistics

Further information: Wikipedia:WikiProject Protista/Assessment

To add an article to the project, put {{WP Protista}} on the talk page.

Important references

Every Wikipedia article must have proper sources. Some important scientific papers for protists are the following:

• Revisions to the Classification, Nomenclature, and Diversity of Eukaryotes
• Kingdom Chromista and its eight phyla (Cavalier-Smith, 2017)
• The year 2010 classification of the agglutinated foraminifera
• Towards a phylogenetic classification of the Myxomycetes
• A Higher Level Classification of All Living Organisms (Ruggiero et al., 2015)
• Between a Pod and a Hard Test: The Deep Evolution of Amoebae
• An Updated Classification of Brown Algae
• Multigene phylogeny and cell evolution of chromist infrakingdom Rhizaria

Useful websites include:

• Microworld, world of amoeboid organisms
• Penard Labs

Related projects

This WikiProject is an offshoot of WikiProject Tree of Life.

• WikiProject Science
  • WikiProject Biology
    • WikiProject Tree of Life
      • WikiProject Protista
      • WikiProject Microbiology – focused on bacteria and viruses, but also helps cover microscopic eukaryotes, especially pathogenic ones.
      • WikiProject Algae – focused exclusively on photosynthetic bacteria and protists.
      • WikiProject Fungi – previously monitored fungus-like protists, such as slime molds and water molds.
      • WikiProject Palaeontology – focused on fossils, helps cover extinct protists.

Categories

Species categories

Species categories are among the most important, since they help quantify how many species are covered by Wikipedia. This WikiProject takes example from WikiProject Fungi, where species are organized in two categories: one for lichen species, and one for the rest of fungus species. Similarly, protist species are organized in categories according to the size of their parent taxon. For example, the category 'Ochrophyte species' groups all ochrophyte species except for diatoms and brown algae, which have their own categories 'Diatom species' and 'Brown algae species' given the large number of species in each. The highest taxa, directly below 'Protist species', generally correspond to the smaller eukaryotic supergroups or phyla (e.g., Amoebozoa, Alveolata), with intermediate clades (e.g., SAR supergroup, Diaphoretickes) considered too superfluous for individual categories.