Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles

So, I have been working on Megophrys numhbumaeng and a couple of related articles in the Megophrys (Xenophrys) megacephala species group, and I noticed that the other Asian horned frog species in this group are still titled under Xenophrys, whereas AmphibiaWeb, the IUCN Red List, and the original describers (Mahony et al. 2017, Mahony et al. 2020) all retain them in Megophrys. Only Amphibian Species of the World, following Lyu et al. 2021, uses Xenophrys.

Would it make sense to move the following to Megophrys, leaving redirects from the Xenophrys titles??

• Xenophrys ancrae
• Xenophrys awuh
• Xenophrys megacephala
• Xenophrys oropedion
• Xenophrys serchhipii
• Xenophrys zunhebotoensis

This is well outside my own field, so I thought of flagging it here first than move anything on my own. Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 04:42, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

I would leave them in Xenophrys. The project uses ASW as the guideline taxonomy for determining article titles and taxobox taxonomy (alternative taxonomies getting discussed in the text). ASW is more focused on the taxonomy and tends to update the taxonomy more frequently, while Amphibiaweb broader biological scope and often lags behind.

A quick look indicates that Mahony et al 2017 lumped all of Megophryinae in genus Megophrys and divided it into subgenera. Amphibiaweb also now treats some most of these subgenera as genera, although with some differences from ASW. Lyu et al (2021) is the most recent taxonomic revision and places those species in the Xenophrys megacephala group (plus Xenophrys dzukou). Amphibiaweb also includes most of that group in Xenophrys, with only awuh amd numhbumaeng in Megophrys.  —  Jts1882 | talk  08:14, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

Agree with @Jts1882 - all taxonomies within similar taxa (e.g., birds, amphibians, etc.) really benefit from the clarity of having a single guideline authority (e.g., IOC/AviList, ASW), otherwise one can get into a situation where a lot of asterisks and invisible notes are needed. ASW is normally the most current and generally explains and cites why they're using one synonym over another.

On an aside, if you are looking to move some frogs around, all of the former genus Leptolalax needs to get moved over to Leptobrachella. I've been working on it slowly, but there are a lot of them. DuckWrangler97 (talk) 14:25, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

I can agree with regard to preferring Amphibian Species of the World to AmphibiaWeb, and I think the AmphibiaWeb crew probably would too. What we actually want is for the Wikipedia version to reflect the state of professional herpetology as it exists in time. As often as AmphibiaWeb has won my heart, it was never for being up to the minute. Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:23, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

ASW does follow Darrel Frost's view where he is actively publishing papers that take a position on something that is disputable on subjective grounds (e.g. whether to treat Lithobates as a subgenus of Rana or a separate genus). I don't know if anybody involved with AmphibiaWeb is actively publishing papers with positions contrary to Frost's views, but they certainly don't always accept Frost's positions. Plantdrew (talk) 03:12, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

I mean only that I think the AmphibiaWeb crew would acknowledge that ASW is updated more often than AmphibiaWeb is, that if we prefer a source updated in 2021 to one updated in 2004, they'd readily agree, even if the 2004 source were their own. Of course there might also be some specific taxonomic vicissitude upon which they disagree with Frost. Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:26, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

An editor has requested that Crocodilia be moved to Crocodylia, which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 02:18, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi folks, per Amphibian Species of the World v6.2, Strabomantidae is now a subfamily of Craugastoridae. That said, IUCN for the time being appears to be maintaining Strabomantidae (see the assessment for Phyllonastes lochites, for example, which ASW 6.2 now places in Craugastoridae).

I don't have a lot of experience in major changes to taxonomy templates, and wanted to ask here first, being relatively new to the herpetofauna space: 1) Do you think IUCN will accept this lumping soon?

2) Should we wait until the change is consistent between Amphibian Species of the World and IUCN to start making any major changes, or follow the ASW taxonomic guideance (i.e., switch Strabomantidae to a subfamily of Craugastoridae)?sensu lato

I appreciate your insights! DuckWrangler97 (talk) 16:14, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Looking at archive.org. ASW made the change, moving the four subfamilies in Strabomantidae to Craugastoridae, about a year ago, but surprisingly without a note in the changes log. If you look at the IUCN record you mention, it gives ASW as its taxonomic reference, so I'd expect it to make the change eventually. New IUCN accessments take time, so the IUCN often lags other taxonomic sources. Amphibiaweb still recognises both families. Looking at recent phylogenies this seems a matter of choice, rather than a necessary change, as Craugastorinae (Craugastoridae sensu stricto) is sister to rest of Craugastoridae sensu lato (=Strabomantidae sensu IUCN).

I think we should make the change to follow ASW. Changing the taxonomy templates is the simple bit. The Strabomantidae and Craugastoridae would need a major revision and any other genus/species articles will probably refer to family Strabomanidae.  —  Jts1882 | talk  17:14, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply! I've already been making the changes from Strabomantidae --> Craugastoridae in the new pages I've made/moved recently, but you're right -- there are certainly hundreds more. Do you think it would be better to wait to change the taxonomy templates until most of the child taxa have their text corrected? DuckWrangler97 (talk) 13:58, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

I think it would be better to change the taxonomy templates first, as well as any other templates; there aren't any navboxes in this cases but there is {{Strabomantidae-stub}}. If templates are updated, then What Links Here will just show links that come from text in the body of the article.

Regarding the stub template, the important thintg is to move it to {{Strabomantinae-stub}} and update the link produced by the template. Ideally the stub template should be called via the new name (Strabomantinae), but isn't too big a deal if the stub template is called as redirect via the old name. There are other places on Wikipedia where a stub template was renamed to reflect an update in taxonomy, but where many articles are still using the redirecting old name of the template. Plantdrew (talk) 20:56, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Do we need {{Strabomantinae-stub}}? The current Strabomantidae-stub category includes species from all four subfamilies, so we'd need categories/templates for the other three subfamilies. Category:Brachycephaloidea stubs only has child categories for Craugistoridae, Strabomantidae (all four subfamilies) and Eleutherodactylus, so redirecting the Strabomantidae-stub template to {{Craugastoridae-stub}} is an alternative. It makes a large category but Strabomantidae-stub was already large.  —  Jts1882 | talk  12:11, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I guess we don't need Strabomantinae-stub. I wasn't clear on exactly how the taxonomy had changed until I saw your comment below about how to best preserve page histories. Redirecting Strabomantidae-stub to Craugastoridae-stub would be fine.

I don't think we really need so many stub categories at all. Stub sorting mostly seems to be busy work for Wikignomes; I don't see any evidence that stub sorting organisms leads to any efforts to expand articles. Taxa already have an obvious way to have hierarchical categories, and if somebody knows about PetScan, it is possible to search for stub articles in a more fine-grained way (e.g. by genus) than the stub sorting categories give. Plantdrew (talk) 15:26, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Oh, and if you are working with taxonomy templates it may be helpful to install User:Jts1882/taxonomybrowser.js, which lets you browse taxonomy templates as a tree. Plantdrew (talk) 21:00, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

I think I agree with taxonomy templates first. I was checking using search, which has 536 instances of Strabomantidae in the source code, i.e. not in the taxobox or any navbox.. But changing the taxonomy template and using what links here is easier, so I'll change the templates.  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:23, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

What isn't so clear is what to do with the main articles, i.e. Strabomantidae and Craugastoridae. The Strabomantidae article covers the four subfamilies that are moved, while Craudastoridae coveres what is now subfamily Craugastorinae. So to minimise cutting and pasting and attribution issues, I'm thinking the best approach is to move Craugastoridae to the subfamily and move Strabomantidae to Craugastoridae and add the extra subfamily. I think this will better preserve the histories, even if not the most obvious approach.  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:25, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I've just noticed that the taxonomy templates place Strabomantis in Craugastrorinae and have done since 2017. ASW6 made the changes around 2021.  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:35, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Taxonomy templates updated for Craugastoridae sensu lato with five subfamilies. I've checked the taxonomy template tree and moved a number of genera that were wrongly assigned to a subfamily and deleted a number of redundant templates (former genera and tribes). Running the taxon browser from Craugastoridae should give a clean updated taxonomy down to genera. I haven't checked the species.  —  Jts1882 | talk  11:57, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I haven't forgotten this but have been researching the history a bit more. Internet Archive has a wealth of information on ASW versions. I've changed my mind on moving pages. I think I'll just update Craugastoridae to the current ASW circumscription. The page history shows it has changed several times between the the sensu stricto and sensu lato versions, so the move doesn't help preserve histories in a useful way.  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:24, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

That solution sounds good to me. I really appreciate you doing the work to look this deeply into it! DuckWrangler97 (talk) 19:14, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Generally, if it's not reader-facing, I don't get too fussed about it, but maintenance categories were recently brought to my attention. Many of the frog articles have the short description "species of frog," but their Wikidata entries say "species of amphibian." This puts them in a maintenance category "Category:Short description is different from Wikidata." Do we prefer to change "frog" to "amphibian," hop over to Wikidata and change "amphibian" to "frog" (could cause an issue because the Spanish short description is "especie de anfibio," not "especie de rana"), or do we not care? Darkfrog24 (talk) 23:20, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

We do not care. Hidden categories may maintenance categories, but most of the hidden categories on taxon articles are tracking categories that do not need any kind of maintenance action. Plantdrew (talk) 02:43, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Wohoo! We don't care! Darkfrog24 (talk) 17:27, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

The genus Trachyboa and its two species, Trachyboa boulengeri and Trachyboa gularis, appear to no longer be valid, with both species now recognised by the IUCN and the Reptile Database as species of Tropidophis. I've flagged both species articles with Template:Update, but if anyone from this project is willing to take a look and make the requisite changes it would be much appreciated. Cheers, Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 05:12, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

I've moved and updated the species articles, plus the necessary changes at Wikidata (what a pain). I've edited the Trachyboa articel, but haven't made it a redirect. The name is still widely used. Tropidophis needs updating but this is more involved. It has a strange two source treatment. A table of species recognised by ITIS, and a second table with extra species recognised by Reptile Database. I added the Trachyboa species to the first table before realising the two source structure I think the tables should be merged. ITIS recognise most of the species and they follow RD with a delay, so we should just follow RD.  —  Jts1882 | talk  12:37, 21 August 2026 (UTC)