Talk:Metazoa

Page Status

So what is this page's status? If you go to the Animalia page there is no link to this page. I think this page should be deleted.Totipotent 18:59, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

In fact the superphylums listed here are the same as those in Eumetazoa. But Eumatazoa is the new phylogenetic clade name, which is a sub-clade of the phylogenetic Metazoa clade name. The Eumatazoa sub-clade is roughly equal to the classical Metazoa subregnum of Animalia. But the two clades are distinct in phylogenetic classification. There were no such subclade in the classical classification, and this explains the confusion. However the classical classification of Metazoa included historically a "Bilateralia" superphylum, which was paraphyletic and has been merged into Eumetazoa in the phylogenetic classification]].

So the classical classification was like this:

• Regnum: Animalia
  • Subregnum: Metazoa stricto sensu
    • Superdivisio: Radiata
    • Superdivisio: Bilateralia
      • Divisio: Protostomia
      • Divisio: Deuterostomia
  • Subregnum: Eumetazoa stricto sensu

Now in the phylogenetic classification it is:

• Clade: Metazoa lato sensu
  • (classical Regnum: Animalia)
    • Clade: Eumetazoa
      • Superphylum: Radiata
      • Superphylum: Protostomia
      • Superphylum: Deuterostomia

But this is still not completely exact for the phylogenetic classification, because there are missing species here, which are part of the Metazoa clade, but not of the Eumetazoa subclade (I think that there may be such species within the Animalia regnum, which would be paraphyletic).

So there does seem to exist here a mix between distinct classifications:

• the classical one (old taxa only: regna, subregna, superdivisii, divisii, ...) based on biomorphological characteristics.
• the phenetic one (new taxa noly: regna, subregna, superphyla, phyla, ...) which is an adaptation of the classical classification to reform the taxonomy with the advances in cladistic phylogeny.
• the phylogenetic one (new clades only), based on genetic characteristics.

There are many such confusions in Wikispecies, which sometimes uses either the first one, or the second one, and in some cases the third one like here... Wikispecies need serious edits to solve all this nightmare!

Very good. And I'm aware of this. We are but a very small community though, and because of the way wikispecies was setup, it takes a lot of time to make changes like this. We're in the process to making things a little easier. Also we have a lot of discussions like this pending (Summary in Wikispecies:Done and to do). So if you care to help, by all means go ahead :) --Kempm 09:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)