Talk:Insectivora

Whoa! Whoa! Oh man! Neither of the examples given is a member of the Insectivore order!! Dear god! john 07:22 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I believe the original writer was referring to insectivorous animals, not the capital-Insectivora. Those two animals are valid insectivorous examples, aren't they? --Menchi 07:32 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yes, they are. Looking at the history, the original article does seem to have been simply about animals that eat insects. You added the material about the order insectivora about a week ago, no? john 07:40 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Guilty. Good thing it's all cleared up now. --Menchi 08:37 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yep, all is well. john 08:49 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

(All of the above pasted in by me, Tannin, from its original location at Talk:Insectivore because it makes more sense over here.

Since the article title is only about the scientific order, shouldn't we separate the "insectivore" part back to its original place at insectivore and leaves cross-references on both articles? --Menchi 14:12 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Great minds think alike, my friend. Or, possibly, fools never differ. I prefer the former explanation, of course. Already done. Tannin

The interrelationships of the traditional Insectivora are uncertain but it mignt yet be monophyletic. Nowadays Lipotyphla seems to be more commonly used though. One morphological analysis found the Insectovorans to be a grade not a clade, but still not supporting relationships of Lipotyphlans with certain non-Insectivoran mammals.

Okay, people. There are some issues here. Mainly, if Insectivora is NOT truly Insectivora, but have, indeed, been discovered to be two different orders, you should probably put that at the TOP, where EVERYONE can see it, instead of having to dig through the article to find out. That way, if, say, I'm doing a school project on it, I will see it RIGHT AWAY, and therefore have something even more interesting to say in my report. Or else, make a link that, when you search for Insectivora, takes you to the options for either Erinaceidae or Soricidae, as said within the article. I myself do not trust my sucky editing skills to change it, so I leave it in the hands of those of you who are better at it than I. :) Thank you! :) ~LadyFroggie

The first sentence says it is no longer used. How much further to the top do you want it? - UtherSRG (talk) 03:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

Point taken, but the problem has largely resolved itself. If you read down as far as the phylogeny, you'll see that more recent findings reffirm that Insectivora (i.e. Lipotyphla) is a single monophyletic order after all. At the very least, we have nothing like a general consensus for splitting it in two, the case is unproven. Order Insectivora/(Eu)lipotyphla is still in business but, unfortunately, this is none too clear since parts of the article have got some catching up to do. (The classification of mammalian orders that is currently in use on Wikipedia seems to take the split as a done deal, so that will need altering too.) I've had a rewrite in mind anyway, because the order's internal classification has a complex history which gets a somewhat perfunctory coverage in the article as it stands. If you can hold your breath while I fix some other pages first, I'll have a stab at it. :) Gnostrat (talk) 03:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

No, Insectivora has gone the way of the dinosaurs. It is no longer used by modern taxonomists. Wikipedia (attempts) to follow Mammal Species of the World, 3rd ed (MSW3), the canonical listing of mammalian taxonomy. - UtherSRG (talk) 03:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

There's no canon. Different workers propose their own systems and the paleontologists have gone with a different one from the molecular guys. The articles should reflect the spectrum of opinion. I agree that the name Insectivora is generally regarded as defunct, or at least too imprecise to be useful, although it continued in use long after the tree shrews, elephant shrews etc. were removed. The grouping of Insectivora-minus-a-few-families, which was renamed to Lipotyphla or Eulipotyphla, is certainly not defunct. I can't find any recent consensus that it would not be premature to abandon Eulipotyphla.

I can foresee that problems might arise if we are set on dogmatically following a 'standard' classification. Since classifications are hypotheses, what happens when Wikipedia's 'standard' gets falsified by new evidence? Wouldn't you agree that, if we are not to end up with seriously misleading articles, Wikipedia needs to be flexible enough to deviate from 'the text' when there is sufficient justification in the literature for doing so? In any case, the article contradicts itself and this will need sorting. Gnostrat (talk) 05:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia is a tertiary source. We should follow what the secondary sources do. The leading secondary source for mammalian taxonomy is MSW3. What individual scientists write in their (primary source papers) is generally not relevant to us until it is used in secondary sources. When things change, we will change. They haven't yet, so we don't. MSW3 is still the canonical taxonomy, and so it should be used. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:55, 26 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

Even if Wikipedia's overall classification can hang around and wait for the next edition of MSW, articles can't. Articles aren't straitjacketed into the taxonomy. They have to reflect the current state of research without bias even if it's at odds with whatever classification we've adopted officially. We can and do reference primary sources in articles, we have a cladogram that's referenced to recent primary research that puts hedgehogs in with shrews — i.e. traditional Lipotyphla, only subdivided differently — and somehow we have to square that with an article which asserts (mostly on the basis of earlier and controversial studies) that this grouping is taxonomically extinct.

What MSW3 has to say is actually far from done and dusted. It acknowledges that Soricomorpha and Erinaceomorpha are "commonly" put together as Insectivora/Lipotyphla and that the separation in the 3rd edition is provisional. After surveying a number of papers, it concludes: "At this stage there exist many conflicting views and no consistent phylogeny of the members of the former Insectivora." This does not inspire confidence that MSW3's classification reflects even a rough consensus of taxonomic opinion. And although it was published in 2005, it doesn't even reference Roca et al (2004). One secondary source to set against MSW3 is Benton's Vertebrate Palaeontology (2005) which continues to affirm a Lipotyphla with hedgehogs in it.

Given the tentative nature of MSW3's three-year-old re-classification, what this article should not do is to say that the grouping Insectivora is as dead as the dinosaurs. That would be a massive overstatement. Fair enough if you want it to set out MSW3's proposal right at the start. But it should be presented as a scheme, not the accepted scheme, since we also have to summarise the research which stands against it. And the fact that we have a field in a state of flux — no consensus that all these families do form a clade, but also no consensus that they don't.

By the way, Wikipedia's classification goes with Benton for much of the higher-level taxonomy of both vertebrates and mammals, and then drops Benton for MSW3 at the ordinal level, so we are already using a patchwork of authoritative sources, rather than a single 'standard'. Gnostrat (talk) 00:36, 27 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

"Molecular studies indicate that Soricomorpha is paraphyletic, because Soricidae shared a more recent common ancestor with Erinaceidae than with other soricomorphs.[2] Other recent studies, however, supports the monophyly of Eulipotyphla"

What's going on in this quote? Monophyly of Eulipotyphla (Soricomorpha+Erinaceidae) has no bearing on paraphyly of Soricomorpha. Eulipotyphla can be monophyletic while containing the members of a paraphyletic Soricomorpha. The History section also claims that "At its widest extent, therefore, the order Insectivora was polyphyletic and cannot be considered a clade." Wouldn't Insectivora sensu lato be paraphyletic, not polyphyletic? I'm going to change these statements.192.104.39.2 (talk) 18:06, 11 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

Now that I looked at the reference given for monophyly of Eulipotyphla, the contrast with paraphyletic Soricomorpha is even more inappropriate. The study referenced shows Eulipotyphla to be monophyletic, and also shows Soricomorpha to be paraphyletic. 192.104.39.2 (talk) 18:18, 11 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

The difference between "paraphyletic" and "polyphyletic" is not always clear, but I think you have to stretch the concept of paraphyly pretty far to make the old Insectivora (Afrosoricida + Lipotyphla + Scandentia + Macroscelidea) paraphyletic. Are there any sources discussing this? You are certainly right that it is bogus to contrast monophyletic Eulipotyphla to paraphyletic Soricomorpha, as the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Another complication is that some recent authors (e.g., Asher and Helgen, 2010) prefer to use "Lipotyphla" instead of "Eulipotyphla" for Soricidae + Talpidae + Erinaceidae + Solenodontidae. Ucucha 18:27, 11 February 2011 (UTC)Reply

Is there a cite for the "order" being abandoned? This issue is not clearly explained in the article.--ZayZayEM (talk) 09:12, 4 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

Read the above discussion. - UtherSRG (talk) 09:18, 4 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

I think this entry should be merged with that for Eulipotyphla, which is very sparse. Divers Alarums (talk) 22:20, 27 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

opentreeoflife came online recently with a draft all-encompassing tree of cellular life. Their node for Laurasiatheria clearly has Insectivora as one of two sub-clades. Insectivora = (Solenodontidae + (Erinaceidae + [Soricidae + Talpidae]) + Nesophontidae). The other toplevel sub-clade (unnamed) = ((Carnivora + Pholidota) + (Chiroptera + [Cetartiodactyla + Perissodactyla])) IMO this shows Insectivora not just to be less extinct then dinosaurs but probably a legitimate clade per recent research. Perhaps the word has changed meaning, where Insectivora defined as any mammal that eats insects is obsolete but Insectivora in this specific cladogram is quite valid. Perhaps this article should distinguish the old ecological-niche definition from the new cladistic definition, stating that only the old definition is obsolete. 198.144.192.45 (talk) 07:05, 24 December 2014 (UTC) Twitter.Com/CalRobert (Robert Maas)Reply