Talk:Tachinidae

Taxobox and other images

I'm of the opinion a taxobox image should be of the highest quality available, and, at the very last, have some semblance of identifiability about it. The image should be a closely cropped representation of the organism in question; vast amounts of "dead air" or flowers, what have you, all look nice but do nothing to help define the subject. "Featured" images may be wonderful pictures, for sure, but the voting of lay members says nothing about the suitability of an image for taxobox use; indeed, the fact a photograph was "featured" says nothing about the provenance or identity of the organism.

Identifying insect specimens strictly from photographs is a dicey propositon at best. Unless a particular species has such an outstanding and unique set of characteristics that are easily seen and agreed upon by a fair number of those familiar with entomology and the structures in question, rarely can an identification to species be made. Most photographs can only yield identfications to family or genus level - and many of those are educated guesses.

I would venture to demand some sort of citation or supporting data underlying all images of insects deemed to be identified to species level, and the same for general identifications. The taxobox image should have at least one qualified expert concur with the designation. (In my humble opinion).

It is for these reasons stated I am replacing the taxobox image with one of my own, along with supporting data and references. I am also going to edit other poor quality and guessed at specimens on this page.

The Tachinids are an important family within Diptera; we'd best have a good article for these critters.
NOTE: having long bristles on the abdomen is not necessarily an indicator of Tachinidae! Nickrz 05:09, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

The Featured image was identified by scientists at the CSIRO and the Australian Musuem - I'm pretty confident in the ID. Your image is of lower res and has a blurry head and has a WB issues - ie it is a poor photograph IMO. And the quality of the Featured image is obviously of a high standard or it wouldn't have earned the FP badge. --Fir0002 12:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

The designation "featured" image (which yours is not, in any event) in no way proves it suitable for taxobox use. I suggest your image is not cropped correctly for diagnostics (fully 50% of the image consists of featureless, irrelevant yellow flower), the postion of the specimen is not conducive to examination of critical identifying morphological characteristics: the antennae, dorsal abdomen and wing veination are not at all visible in your photo. A pretty picture, all right, but one ill-suited for the use in question.

Your criticism of my photograph's depth of field or supposed "WB issues" fly in the face of its emminent suitability for diagnostic use, as is a primary criterion for the taxobox.Nickrz (talk) 18:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

"only one grub"

Can somebody clarify the last phrase of the following sentence?

They are endoparasites (internal parasites) of caterpillars of butterflies and moths, adult and larval beetles, sawfly larvae, various types of true bugs and grasshoppers, rarely in centipedes, with usually only one grub.

Does it mean that usually a host individual has only one maggot? —JerryFriedman (Talk) 01:52, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

"Many more (species) to be discovered"?

Is this statement encyclopedic: "...more than 8,200 known species and many more to be discovered."? This is only speculation, isn't it? Paulburnett (talk) 15:36, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Taxobox image

I am re-inserting Tachinidae.jpg as the taxobox image instead of File:Thomas Bresson - Tachina fera (by).JPG. Tachinidae.jpg has better quality, DOF, lighting and overall view of the fly compared to File:Thomas Bresson - Tachina fera (by).JPG. It is also a featured picture, making it one of the finest images of wikipedia. Not beong completely identified is not a minus point as this article is about the family and not a particular species. Please discuss changes --Muhammad(talk) 18:45, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

The alternative I replaced your preferred image with is also a featured picture; I don't think you can denigrate its quality as a means of preferring one over the other: they're both technically excellent. A lack of identification is very much a minus point. The new image is also a much more interesting composition. --Stemonitis (talk) 18:54, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Whether or not it is a featured image is completely irrelevant. Whatever image best illustrates the article should be used. Having a species ID is definitely a plus, in my opinion. Kaldari (talk) 20:51, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

The image that you replace my image with, has very harsh lighting and short DOF. The short DOF also makes me question the value it may have to an average reader. It is not easily distinguishable as a tachinid fly due to lack of visual clues as the bristle like hairs etc which have gone out of focus. Again, species id should not be mandatory at this point since this is the family article. --Muhammad(talk) 22:48, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Came here from FPC talk and thought I'd add my two cents. Tachinidae.jpg is much better in my eyes. As someone who is not an expert on flies, when I come to an article on them, I'm looking for an image that shows me what that specific fly looks like. File:Thomas Bresson - Tachina fera (by).JPG does not do that for me. The angle is not ideal - the wings are hard to make out as is the overall body structure. Shallow DOF also hurts in this regard. The other image gives a better idea of what this fly looks like. I don't think its lack of species level identification hurts it since this is a family article. As long as it's actually a Tachinid, it's representative of the family. Anyway, since Tachinid flies apparently vary greatly in appearance, why not just put both images in the article? Makeemlighter (talk) 00:13, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I put both of the images in the article but Stemonitis removed Tachinidae.jpg. --Muhammad(talk) 02:20, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

The problem with your specific solution (without passing judgement on the possibility of having two taxobox images), was that there were two images, image1 and image2, but only a single caption, image2_caption. This gave the impression that the caption applied to both image1 and to image2, which is simply misleading. We don't know what species your image1 is, and labelling it as Tachina fera, even inadvertently, must be avoided.

We can argue about photos as much as we like; ultimately it's a matter of taste. I have seen a lot of pictures of flies in taxoboxes, and they all look exactly the same to me. It's the same unimaginative composition every time, which I entirely understand: every picture I've taken of a fly has been the same. I think that having a slightly unusual image is much more likely to draw the reader's attention.

However, there is a larger point here, which I think Kaldari has made well (elsewhere). Featured status depends on encyclopaedic value, not the other way around. Images should not be added / replaced in articles purely to further a featured picture nomination. This is particularly true for flies. We have so little real content on flies that most species you see probably haven't got an article. It's a perfect opportunity to write a whole new article, or expand an existing one beyond the uninformative substub "Aus bus is a species of fly." There is a case to be made for including the image here, but that case hasn't been made. The picture had been uploaded long before I trawled through all the pictures of Tachinidae on the Commons (now laid out at commons:Tachinidae) and picked what I considered, as a biologist, to be the best to illustrate this article.

As a side issue, the image's inclusion at iridescence cannot, I think, be justified; I nearly removed that gallery once before under WP:IG. I won't remove it now, because that would seem spiteful. --Stemonitis (talk) 05:09, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

The picture in question was granted FP status after it was placed in the article and deemed to be the best by a group of reviewers at FPC who analyzed its EV and quality. With this in mind, I replaced the picture you added. Furthermore, the image was stable in the article for more than a year (until you removed). As I have stated before, I feel, (as does Makeemlighter above) that Tachinidae.jpg is a better representation of the family than the current image. Nonetheless, I am willing to put up two taxobox images since this is a varied family and this would hopefully offer more insight to readers. --Muhammad(talk) 08:53, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Host specificity

A comment in the article refers to Tachinidae as generalist parasites. Some species are generalists but many, probably most, species have narrow host ranges. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 20:29, 14 March 2019 (UTC)