Talk:Animal

Necessity of dedicated Ecdysozoa and Spiralia sections

Of course this is getting into some rather deep water (what with how much is written on them in the article and how much work from so many people I'm talking about) but is the presence of detailed subsections for Ecdysozoa and Spiralia truly necessary when deuterostome phyla are adequately covered with a brief overview in the relevant paragraph and plentiful links to their articles proper? It is nice to shine a light on protostomes, but it does lead to quite asymmetric emphasis in this section and invites even more disputed taxonomy in, which the article already has in abundance I think we can all agree. I reckon it might be worthwhile to tighten up the article by removing Ecdysozoa and Spiralia as sections, moving the noteworthy examples up to bring it in congruence with the description for deuterostomes. The previous diagram contrasting radial and spiral cleavage would make up for the lack of the spiral cleavage specific one, and the controversy in spiralia can be left to its own dedicated article this way. If nothing else, the sections should be cleaned up (are we sure "The Spiralia's phylogeny" is grammatical?) if they are to be kept. Xiphosura^Talk∞Edits 13:40, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Those sections are also the first time those clades are mentioned throughout the entire article, setting them aside would bring the Bilateria section into general congruence with the second paragraph of the article: "the vast majority of bilaterians belong to two large superphyla: the protostomes, which includes organisms such as arthropods, molluscs, flatworms, annelids and nematodes; and the deuterostomes, which include echinoderms, hemichordates and chordates, the latter of which contains the vertebrates." Xiphosura^Talk∞Edits 13:43, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Replying to yourself ... Ok, I must say I broadly agree, having already slimmed down the phylogeny so that (ahem) it doesn't mention Ecdysozoa and Spiralia any more (it once tried to cover every phylum, that way madness lies). I'll have a go at slimming down the material as you indicate. The grammar is fine in BE by the way. I think we should get the phylogeny to cover the protostomes and deuterostomes so we have an accurate match with the section headings, to complete your logic. Obviously that must be cited; as I'm allergic to composite (ORish) trees, we need a phylogeny source that goes that far. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:52, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for that. The phylogeny section is definitely in a better state than it was, but the years of revisions seemed to have left some loose ends, at least considering article cohesion. With regard to steering clear of composite tree bloat, it would be great if we could find a grand review study covering covering current research on all this. It gets confusing when the article presents something as consensus, despite being explicitly "proposed" phyla, it ends up smelling of OR/synth even if none is intended. Is there a general process for how to present cladograms with disputed relationships? Xiphosura^Talk∞Edits 14:56, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Glad you like it, more or less. There are no 'proposed' phyla on any tree in the article, and there is certainly no OR as each tree is based directly on a single cited source. This article also certainly isn't the place to show disputes (with dashed lines, whatever) within the Bilateria, if that's your goal, it simply isn't this article's function to go into that sort of detail. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:12, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Sorry I should have been clear in what I was referring to, Nephrozoa as included in the Bilateria tree here is said to be "proposed" in its own article, which also emphasizes its controversial nature, though this one calls it consensus. Citation in Nephrozoa despite being a stub is from 2019, in this article the claim of consensus is cited with a 2014 source. This discrepancy is what is confusing to see. Xiphosura^Talk∞Edits 15:22, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Well, the Nephrozoa are quite well supported, and the alternative is the weakly-supported hypothesis that the Deuterostomia is paraphyletic. Swalla 2024 says the deuterostomes are a clade, so I think we can stay with what we have here really. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:29, 15 January 2025 (UTC)