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Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Protista

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Description

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This project would be aimed at every page regarding a protist. Protists are eukaryotic organisms classified as neither plants, nor fungi, nor animals, and they account for a considerable portion of Earth's biodiversity. Among them there are immensely different groups, such as dinoflagellates (2,249 species), amoebozoans (2,400 species), radiolaria (>15,000 species), foraminifera (>50,000 species), etc. all united by their belonging to the kingdom Protista (or, alternatively, to the two protist kingdoms Chromista and Protozoa). Many species, genera, families and entire orders of protists aren't yet documented in Wikipedia (as can be seen in Taxonomy of Protista, where it is noticeable that most genera pages don't exist). This project would ensure that protists receive the same importance as plants, animals and fungi, all of which are major groups of eukaryotes with their own WikiProjects. Additionally, Protistology itself is an increasingly growing branch of Biology, while at the same time has been around since the invention of microscopes more than 200 years ago, and this could be reflected by creating its individual WikiProject separated from the botanist, mycologist and zoologist projects.

List of important pages and categories for this proposed group

List of WikiProjects currently on the talk pages of those articles
Please invite these and any other similar groups to join the discussion about this proposal. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory to find similar WikiProjects.
Why do you want to start a new group, instead of joining one of these existing groups?
Protists aren't all photosynthetic; many important groups are heterotrophic, which means they cannot be fully covered by Wikipedia:WikiProject Algae, which focuses only on the photosynthetic ones. Moreover, many of them are multicellular and macroscopic, and therefore not regarded by Wikipedia:WikiProject Microbiology. Lastly, Wikipedia:WikiProject Microbiology is a project that mainly focuses on bacteria and viruses, not so much eukaryotic microorganisms.Snoteleks (talk) 08:21, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support

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Also, specify whether or not you would join the project.

  1. Snoteleks (talk) 07:58, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  2. (I work on articles on various groups of organisms without formally joining projects, but I've done some work on protists (particularly algae). Plantdrew (talk) 19:55, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  3. (Will probably not join, however I think that this idea is neat) Luxtay the IInd (talketh to me) 16:22, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  4. I for one will welcome our protist overlords! (I dabble in all Tree of Life articles... it's good for every branch of the tree to have a supporting Project.) - UtherSRG (talk) 19:22, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  5. I would help with this and join this group is problematic both here and on other projects with far too little attention. I admittedly know little about many of them I had a discussion on taxacom recently just trying to get an over arching taxonomy for them that was up to date from taxonomists that do work on them. Very difficult. But I should be able to help here and also use the info I am getting for other projects as well. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 21:10, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  6. I support the creation of a Protista WIkiproject. Loopy30 (talk) 21:29, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support the creation of WikiProject Protista. Judekkan (talk) 15:04, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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@Snoteleks:, the only multicellular and macroscopic protists I'm aware of are algae and things that have been considered "fungus-like" (e.g. slime molds). Admittedly, there are many groups of protists that I don't know anything about. Are there multicellular and macroscopic protists that aren't algae or "fungi"? Plantdrew (talk) 17:14, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There's the xenophyophores, which are macroscopic and multinucleate protists, like slime molds! Except they're sessile and absorb minerals around them to grow, and only live in the deep ocean. They are very strange. And if you count colonies, there's also colonial choanoflagellates such as Salpingoeca, or colonial radiolarians such as Polycystinea. That's about all the examples I can think of right now that aren't photosynthetic or "fungi-like". Snoteleks (talk) 20:32, 6 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, neat! I'm glad to learn about xenophyophores. Plantdrew (talk) 19:53, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier in my Wikipedia career I spent a fair amount of time adding WikiProject banners to taxon articles. I wasn't sure what WikiProject should apply to non-algal/"fungal" protists and left them untagged. A handful of foraminiferans were tagged with WikiProject Tree of Life, and a few protists had WikiProject Microbiology (which was otherwise mostly devoted to bacteria). By 2018 pretty much every taxon article had a WikiProject banner aside from the non-algal/fungal protists. Another editor added WikiProject Microbiology to protists in 2019. I'm not sure that a WikiProject for protists will see much activity, but protists are basically orphaned from the existing WikiProject for organisms and it might be helpful to have a WikiProject where protists are clearly in scope. I like to work on converting manual taxoboxes to automatic ones, but want to make sure in doing so that I'm not following an outdated classification. A WikiProject for protists would provide a forum for discussing which classifications to follow, and a place to link appropriate taxonomic resources. Plantdrew (talk) 20:02, 7 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Might a broader Eukaryote project be appropriate. It could cover the articles on protist taxa, but also the relationships between different groups of eurkaryotes, including those with their own projects. Protists is rather unsatisfying group for the 21st century and this project would either be handling non-photosynthetic protists or overlap considerably with the algae. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:57, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Jts1882 Both terms "Algae" and "Protists" can be deemed "unsatisfying" from an outside perspective. After all, both refer to non-monophyletic groups of mostly microorganisms that are rarely ever talked about in basic education. However protists are anything but irrelevant; their importance in the fields of ecology, pathology, evolutionary biology, biochemistry, etc. (even virology, of all things) is unquestionable. Especially in recent decades, as the number of scientific papers regarding protists is evergrowing significantly each year, so it's definitely not some forgettable branch of biology that's destined to remain stuck in the 19th-20th centuries. The number of protists described is also growing exponentially. From the point of view of Wikipedia, protists are an enormous untapped source of information waiting to be published about. I understand the uncleanliness of having two wikiprojects overlapping each other, but that's what happens all the time in Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life, with Palaeontology overlapping Animals with animals that happen to be extinct, and even a project called Biota of Great Britain and Ireland overlapping everything else that happens to be in those islands. I have never seen the overlap regarded as something negative. (Of course, I would prefer if the Algae project was modified into a Protista project so that it also takes care of non-phototrophic protists, and ideally there would be an Algae taskforce, but I don't know if that's possible, and I don't expect them to be happy to change their entire project.) Regardless, a project dedicated to Protista, even if it was exclusively about the non-photosynthetic ones, would definitely have its hands full with work and would offer a place for attention and effort that just aren't present in the Microbiology one. And yes, it would also take care of the evolution of eukaryotes in general, since that's already the focus of many, many protist-related papers, such as the ones investigating the rise of animal multicellularity. Snoteleks (talk) 18:44, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Algae and Protists are both unsatisfactory, but at least algae are defined by a common property. Incidentally, Algae wouldn't work as a taskforce of Protista as they include blue-green algae. My suggestion of Eukaryote for the project would cover the same things your Protista would, but I think it would attract more interest. It would be more obviously the place to discuss eukaryote evolution. Most people (especially new editors) wouldn't know that this topic was covered by Protista and would continue to go to Tree of Life. Using Eukaryote is also more consistent with Animals being the project for all animals not covered by another project. Either way I will support the forming of a new project. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:44, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Eukaryotes would more clearly cover clades/taxa above traditional kingdoms such as opisthokonts. Those are currently tagged for WikiProject Tree of Life. Plantdrew (talk) 16:55, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I still don't think it should be called Eukaryotes since animals, plants and fungi are eukaryotes and those are already covered by their respective WikiProjects. Like I said, a Protista project would cover higher eukaryote relationships just fine. Besides, if there is a wikiproject Eukaryotes eventually a wikiproject Prokaryotes would be necessary for the distinction, which would render the Microbiology one useless, wouldn't it? I see other two alternatives: either maintaining Protista as the name and accepting the overlap between Protista and Algae, or making Protista a "parent" project that can host both the existing Algae project and another new project called Protozoa, thus solving the overlap. Opinions on this? Snoteleks (talk) 18:08, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Your proposed scope might be better covered by Protozoa, which wouldn't overlap with Algae. While Protozoa is also an unnatural group, it is still used in Cavalier-Smith systems and the Ruggiero et al (2015) classification, which is used for the higher classification by Catalogue of Life and possibly by ITIS. —  Jts1882 | talk  15:19, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ruggiero is the head of ITIS. Basically the whole point of his classification was to produce something that ITIS could use. Plantdrew (talk) 15:50, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad you mentioned the Ruggiero et al. classification. It does mention a taxon called 'Protozoa', but in the sense used in that paper, Protozoa is merely one of the two kingdoms of protists (Chromista and Protozoa), containing Amoebozoa, choanoflagellates, and basically every protist that's more closely related to animals and fungi than to plants. But there are plenty of "protozoans" (i.e. non-photosynthetic protists) in the kingdom Chromista too. ☽ Snoteleks ☾ 18:43, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Regardless, the project has been created and is now up and running. ☽ Snoteleks ☾ 18:44, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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