The following items are desirable for articles of all levels, although the details will vary depending on several factors.
These items do not necessarily need to be separated into distinct sections, and lists of facts are best avoided unless the information is significantly clearer when presented that way. Text should flow in continuous prose as far as possible. Avoid sentence fragments, even in shell descriptions.
The exact order in which this information is included is relatively unimportant, and the order here is not necessarily preferred. Please try to follow the order that was used in our Good Articles.
- Title - We would prefer you use the scientific name wherever possible, and make the common name a redirect to the scientific name. In cases where the common name is really well known and widely recognized you can use it, but these are few. Titles of articles about genera or species (using the scientific name) need to be in italics, and every use of a genus name or a genus and species name must also be in italics.
- Taxobox - This is a necessity for articles that are about a gastropod taxon. See information in the section on "Classification".
- Introduction - Please make sure that the first sentence is intelligible to non-specialists. For example, say "land snail" and then say terrestrial gastropod.
- Species lists - In genus articles it is routine to include a species list. However, many of our pre-existing (older) species lists are currently (May 2010) misleading, not only because many of these lists are incomplete, but also because many of them contain redundant synonyms. Please be very careful which websites or publications you use as sources for species lists! Thank you.
- Description (physical and behavioral) - What makes this (group of) gastropod(s) different from its close relatives? Anatomy etc. Remember that the shell is only one part of a snail!
- Ecology
- Habitat - What type of environments does it live in?
- Distribution - Which areas and countries does it live in? Where is it native? Where is it introduced? Maps are helpful.
- Food species and predators - if known.
- Parasites - if known
- Human uses - Cultural, religious, economic, medical, etc. importance - what impact has it had on humans?
Two special areas:
- Classification - How does it fit into the Tree of Life? We are currently using the newest classification Taxonomy of the Gastropoda (Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005), which is also outlined in Gastropoda. If you happen to come across an article where the taxoboxes and/or text are using older taxonomy, please take the time to update it, or at least to delete the outdated sections of the taxobox.
- Photograph(s) - where possible, images of the living animal, especially in situ, are the most valuable. Images of an empty shell are very useful as supporting material, but are not ideal to represent a species. (When posting an image of a shell, or when you come across an image of a shell in an article, in the caption please describe it as a shell of the species, to counteract the fairly common idea that the shell is the species.)
- Captions of photos - where possible include not only the identification, but also the locality and the date.
- Are you about to take some photos for the project? Please either include a millimeter scale bar or the edge of a ruler (not a coin) in your picture, or, measure the shell or animal and record how large it is as part of the description when you upload the image. When you write the description notes, please say where the shell or live animal was found (assuming you know that, assuming that it was found in nature, not bought in a shop), and also if possible say when it was found. Thank you.
A note about related articles
[edit]When you create a species article, once you are finished with it, if no genus article exists, please consider taking the time to modify what you did in order to create a simple genus stub as well. This takes very little extra time. A family article often already exists, and if so, then creating a genus stub links the species article up into the rest of the "Tree of Life" structure. Thanks.