Talk:Morelia spilota

Synonym?

Is this the snake sometimes called "Morelia argus"? If so, it would be good to add a synonymy. Dysmorodrepanis 02:35, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Morelia spilota spilota needs to be merged back into this article, since according to the rules of zoological nomenclature the species and the nominate subspecies represent the same animal. What we have here currently are two articles that describe the same animal. It also breaks the synonymy. I've worked on hundreds of these articles and in every case the name for the nominate subspecies redirects to the species name. That is how the situation was previously. The current situation is illogical and inconsistent. --Jwinius (talk) 18:47, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

• Support as nominator. --Jwinius (talk) 18:53, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support, especially per what Jwinius said here: [1]. Tim Q. Wells (talk) 22:37, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support - in general there is no reason to have separate subspecies article, unless there is a significant amount of information that is different from each other. Subspecies rarely differ in their biological and ecological attributes and the differences are largely associated with distribution ranges and slight differences in morphology. To clarify however, the group of organisms named using binomials includes all the subspecies and is not only the nominate subspecies. Shyamal (talk) 01:42, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I seem to have missed on the earlier discussions. If the consolidation is for all subspecies then this merge is fine but not for just one subspecies. Shyamal (talk) 11:53, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• Support - Logical and required for sake of consistency. AshLin (talk) 03:55, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support - Only in extremely special cases should subspecies get their own articles. Shrumster (talk) 23:24, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
• Completely disagree (and we don't vote on things on WP). Unless someone has made significant edits since I changed the article so it was not focusssing on the diamond, you are incorrect insaying we have two articles on the same subspecies. The nominate species system works very well in the case of a a species like Canis lupus where the subspecies are recognised to hace the nominate as the ancestor. That is not the case in morelia spilota, it is simply that the diamond was the first described, and as I pointed out to the nom, when I changed the article (which by the way described a diamond with an image of a jungle and was a mish mash of facts about diamonds and others) even the ITIS system, which he uses as the standard (see his user page) does not have the Morelia spilota and the rest on different elevel of classification: http://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=634780 compared to Canis lupus: http://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=180596

You will notice that for Morelia spilota, all the subspecies are listed as children, including Morelia spilota spilota, whereas for the Grey wolf, the children list does not include Canlis lupus Lineaus. Further arguments to be found on my talk page. Viridae^Talk 10:47, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Subspecies articles

Why are there separate articles for the subspecies? The only information which is unique for each subspecies is distribution and a couple morphological features. All of which could be included in this article without expanding it too much.

Look at Whistling Tree Frog. It has two subspecies, one of which is critically endangered. There is actually a lot of information on the rare species, but splitting the article means that you create two sub-par articles instead of creating one good one. An article should only be split once it gets too large, and this article certainly isn't in danger of that. Thanks --liquidGhoul (talk) 02:30, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

That's a good question and I'm glad you asked. While I'm no longer sure whether I'm responsible for starting this particular trend in this series of snake articles, I certainly am guilty of perpetuating it! It's true that most of the subspecies articles I'm helping to maintain are not that long, and doubtless you've noticed the arguments put forth in the recent merge proposal for this very article. So, why not merge all of this information into a single article? There would certainly be fewer articles to maintain. It would seem easy to agree, but in my view keeping them separate has more than a few advantages, mainly of a practical nature related to the way Wikipedia works:

• There is more to say and more room to say it. I agree that most of the subspecies articles in this series have so far been relatively short, but it's possible to say a lot more about them than most people think and without separate articles to accommodate such growth I don't see that happening very quickly, if at all. For example, in Gloyd & Conant (1990), their complete description of Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma (western cottonmouth) is over 14 pages long, so I would guess that there's plenty of information available on most subspecies if you know where to find it.
• Easier to find information. If all of the information on each subspecies is in a single article it becomes harder to spot. With six subspecies, Morelia spilota would be a case in point: some of these have very different appearances and live in very different habitats. It would be more confusing to lump all that information together. Similarly, it's more accurate to link more specific names to more specific information: if a reader fills in the name of a subspecies, one of its synonyms, or a common name associated with it (all of these have redirects), I can only imagine that it would be somewhat disappointing to end up in a general article for the species. In particular, there is the danger that the first things they would see in such a general article would not have anything to do specifically with the subspecies they were looking for.
• Name separation. When you consider the sheer numbers of taxonomic synonyms and common names that can often apply to a single subspecies, that becomes another reason to associate them with separate articles. This makes it much easier to show which names apply to which subspecies.
• Image separation. Again, Morelia spilota is a good example. If we have several images for each of the six subspecies, it's easier to spread them out over six articles than to include them all in one article, which could become "image heavy" as a consequence. Yes, you could dump many of them in a gallery section, but I'd consider that something of a compromise.
• Less controversy. If all of the information on all of the subspecies is to be found in a single article, which subspecies is to be featured in the taxobox? Which names are to be mentioned first in the lead section? Which subspecies is to be described first? With some people even arguing that no subspecies are any more representative of the species than the next (which disagrees with our own article on Subspecies), these decisions would become completely arbitrary and thus subject to individual preference. At Wikipedia, that sort of thing has often led to controversy and edit wars. I believe that the formula applied to this series of articles works to prevent that.

As for the grow and split approach, in my view that represents more work and less certainty. How should articles be organized like before a potential split? What should they look like afterwards? When do you split? If you split, should all of the subspecies be split off, or just some of them? There is too much uncertainly involved here for my taste. I would much rather work systematically and according to clearly definable rules. I would actually prefer that the species articles be fleshed out properly before any subspecies articles are created, but in cases in which a subspecies is well known and many images are already available, in my view it's not worth it to avoid creating a separate article at an earlier point. Besides, if you know that an article is eventually going to split anyway, postponing the inevitable is only going to mean more work in total for the sake of temporary appearance. --Jwinius (talk) 14:16, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, makes sense, thanks for explaining. Though I hope you are deciding whether to split species on an individual basis rather than just a concrete rule. Just one more thing. This article says that it is about M. s. s., but constantly throughout there are references to other subspecies. Either that statement in the lead needs to go, and another article created for M.s.s., or the article needs some focus. Thanks --liquidGhoul (talk) 00:57, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry: concrete rule. No exceptions means no consideration is ever needed means less controversy. Actually, there is one exception, but that involves monotypic taxa (e.g. Azemiopinae, Daboia). As for this article (and most of the others in the python section), I may have overhauled them and fixed the taxonomy, but I'm not responsible for more than 5% of the actual content, so there's plenty here that needs improving. I'll take a look at it, though. --Jwinius (talk) 09:12, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the contents of this article, it's currently more or less the way it should be, providing a description of the species in general and the nominate in particular (the geo. ranges for the subsp. are in the subsp. table). But, I agree that in this case there's too little emphasis on either and too much on the other subspecies. Unfortunately, I lack the necessary resources to rewrite this article. Actually, it was originally titled "Carpet Python", describing M. s. variegata and the other subspecies, while M. s. spilota was described separately in "Diamond Python," so it was a bit of a mess to begin with. --Jwinius (talk) 09:40, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Largest Predator?

RE: "An important, if not the largest, predator in many regions, the species traps or constricts its prey until they suffocate" It is not clear if "largest" refers to the snakes physical size or the quanitity of prey taken--Dr. Pete Simons (talk) 21:58, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)

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Venomous

I know many of the people editing this article are serious biologists recording a biological description and taxonomy but surely an entire article that doesn't mention if it is venomous or not defeats the object for most visitors to the page. 86.176.228.168 (talk) 21:55, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

It's a python, they're non venomous.--Kar98 (talk) 11:50, 29 August 2023 (UTC)