Talk:Microfauna

Definition

Are the people who wrote this article high?? This article makes NO sense... It describes *micro*fauna, but then only gives a list of *macro*fauna, which isn't even defined. It seems as though most of the listed animals are macrofauna, though the headings say microfauna...

 Done I deleted all those irrelevant examples of macrofauna. Astronaut (talk) 03:46, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Protozoa

This page describes Microfauna as being mostly microscopic animals, but Protazoa are not in the Kingdom Animalia. Right? 99.158.253.95 (talk) 14:35, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I went through and reorganized this page a bit to flow better, but more work needs to be done in order to develop the content more thoroughly. To answer a previous comment, protozoans are not in the animal kingdom--they are defined as animal-like protists. No citations have been made at this point, which also needs to be corrected.Kujohnson (talk) 18:00, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose merging Micro-animal into Microfauna. The two articles were apparently written without knowledge of each other and seem to describe nearly the exact same thing except that Micro-animal apparently excludes protists. Someone more familiar with the sources or biological classification should clarify the difference between the two terms if any, but it seems to me that they are similar enough to be merged, with the difference between the two terms mentioned in the article after the merger. 9³ (talk) 04:20, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Support merge, even if the topics are not precisely identical. Our readers benefit from having one solid article describing the overall concept, instead of two skimpy overlapping articles. — hike395 (talk) 05:54, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Support per @Hike395 Asparagusus (talk) 16:59, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Support Notably, not a single one of the sources which is currently utilized to support micro-animal actually uses the word "micro-animal" or anything like it, making this something of a case of reaching original research. Though it is easy enough to deduce the meaning of the word, I've scarcely (if ever?) heard the term used in any empirical or research context--or in general, that I can recall. A quick google search turns up mostly very recent (and indeed, largely meme-ish or meme-adjacent pop science coverage) content, tracking with the rise of tardigrades as a minor pop culture fixation in recent years. There is some use of the term in peer-review, but the use of micro-fauna outpaces it by a factor of about 30:1.

We also need to be careful about WP:OR/WP:SYNTH in our leads describing the terms, because the strict dichotomy that "micro-fauna" = microscopic multicellular organisms, and "microorganism" = microscopic unicellular organisms is not really altogether accurate. In fact, at a minimum, microorganism is the larger class, to which micro-fauna belong; microrganism is a term that hastraditionally been considered as inclusive of both single- and multi-cellular organisms, provided they are microscopic. Complicating things even further is the fact that historically, "micro-fauna" has occasionally been used as a true synonym for "microorganism", also inclusive of both single cell and multi-cell organisms. This should probably all be reflected expressly (if briefly) in the lead of this article, because, while I'm not sure if the perception of a strict dichotomy originated with us here on Wikipedia, or was imported from elsewhere, I think it's definitely new(ish), far from anything remotely universal in the sources (and relevant fields at large), and thus is original research until such time as such usage establishes itself in the corpus of RS. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 06:14, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

 Done with merge. @Snow Rise: please feel free to fix any original research that you think remains in the article. — hike395 (talk) 05:16, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

I'll see if I can't tailor an acceptable approach, when I can find the time. But if I'm 100% honest, the more I look at the situation, the more I wonder if this article as well shouldn't also just be a redirect to microorganism. I can't review the first two sources immediately, but with regard to the other sources (and indeed, from context, probably with regard to all sources currently used in even this combined article), not a single source seems to include even an indirect description of what constitutes the features or classification of 'microfauna', let alone an express definition. Rather the whole concept seems to be synthed together from incidental uses of the term in disparate sources. And I doubt the introductory cultural anthropology text provides sufficient description in terms of microbiology to ameliorate that shortcoming, even if I did have it front of me.

Mind you, I'm not saying that microfauna isn't an actual utilitarian term used on occasion, even in clinical research. But it seems to be largely a synonym for microorganism, and even if there is legitimately a trend of using it to describe just a subclass of microscopic organisms consisting of a grab-bag of clades (protists, nematodes) without a common taxonomic feature or phylogentic family (that is to say, it's a term of convenience, rather than a differential descriptor), we would still need RS describing it in something like those express terms before a stand-alone article was entirely justified under WP:V/WP:WEIGHT/WP:N. At present I would say even the combined article strikes me as something of a POVFORK, albeit one resulting from two clearly well-intentioned articles that are reaching towards something that is genuinely found in niche vernacular. It's just that at present, it is something very nebulous, with the content here not at all well supported by the sources employed.

So honestly, I would support redirecting the whole thing to microorganism and just included a note on the nomenclature of this term there, with a few sentences (which is all the sources here really support at present, really). However, that is too big a move for me to feel comfortable making unilaterally. Especially after a merger discussion where I failed to identify these issues sooner. So instead I will just make some adjustments here when I can, and then leave this commentary for others; if my analysis is found apt, we can always do they second-round merger later, with no significant issue for the delay. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 19:15, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

human microbiome microfauna

is there a list we could use? Arlo James Barnes 09:43, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: BIO 476 - Paleoecology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 26 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kait.Snow (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Eyeball7878, AvaArdito, Illiad5922.

— Assignment last updated by Eyeball7878 (talk) 23:33, 20 March 2024 (UTC)