Talk:Plains viscacha rat

Untitled

Wait, I just saw a slightly worse article with a picture at Plains Viscacha. Can someone clear this up? Cupy 52040 (talk) 08:27, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

That is a different species, belonging to a different family. Ucucha 13:30, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Authority name for this species

A good point was recently made "people who were dead in 1895 tend not to describe new species in 1941". I have, however, restored George Newbold Lawrence as the authority because I suspect it might be correct. Perhaps a zoologist can check into this. As a botanist, my understanding of the zoological code of nomenclature is very limited, but I think zoologists do have a mechanism that allows weird listings such as the name of the person who first described the species, followed by the date when somebody else moved it to a different genus. (Further comments about the relative sanity of the botanical code omitted to save space.) Nadiatalent (talk) 13:34, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

They don't. I would find it advisable to make sure what I put in a Wikipedia article is right before putting it in that article. A cursory investigation was enough to determine that the actual Lawrence who described this species was a B. Lawrence, and in fact Barbara Lawrence (1909–1997, but not Barbara Lawrence), who worked at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Ucucha 13:42, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

It's great now. Sorry to doubt you. I looked at your talk page and there was such a lot of general stuff that I thought you might just be guessing. Anyway, it is excellent now. Nadiatalent (talk) 13:49, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

It's true there is a quite deplorable lack of rodents on my talk page. Fortunately, my user page is a little better. Well, it's correct now. Ucucha 13:55, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Ploidy

The part about ploidy is quite confusing and has been incorporated into other articles. Someone please look at it.88.157.194.238 (talk) 15:34, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree... at first it states the species is tetraploid, but then foes on about how it has some characteristic that makes it not "truly" tetraploid. Is it tetraploid or not? Or was it a "true" tetraploid that is now having its redundant chromosomes drift apart genetically? Someone should figure this out... SarrCat ∑;3 20:24, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

I've edited the text to hopefully make it clearer. The summary appears to be that whether or not the species is tetraploid remains controversial. I don't know where the debate currently stands, but the current text at least reflects what the sources already cited in the article actually say. Having said which, the most recent source cited is from 2006, so it is possible that things have moved on since. Anaxial (talk) 20:43, 11 October 2015 (UTC)