Talk:Insect

Semi-protected edit request on 12 December 2023

Under "insects and other bugs" --> Diversity --> figure with header "Insects are extremely diverse. Five groups each have over 100,000 described species" the word "Bettles" should be changed to "Beetles" Finaledylctvm (talk) 06:54, 12 December 2023 (UTC) Done. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:02, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

lead image

I feel we can still use File:Insect collage.png. We can either expand it with non-Neoptera insects or even replace two of them. LittleJerry (talk) 02:44, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I feel that that would be a backward step. Here's why. Many, most, readers now use small mobile devices. They see a tiny collage of 4, 8, 12, 16 teeny tiny leggy thingies with, um, legs or teeth or shells or somethings. Don't know, doesn't matter, move on, read.... it's simply useless as an experience.

With one insect there, those readers have a chance of seeing a 3-part body, 3 pairs of legs, a complex head, a long abdomen, segments even. A million times more useful, more to the point. Chiswick Chap (talk) 03:44, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 January 2024

Change "Woodlouse: a dozen legs, a dozen segments"

to "Woodlouse: seven pairs of legs, seven body segments" 50.173.91.21 (talk) 14:34, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

That'd be seven thoracic segments, I see. Ok, let's tweak the text. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:38, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Lead image

I started a discussion on this some months ago, see the thread above, but it seems to be being ignored by editors, so let's try again. The MOS indicates that the lead should have an image which gives an idea of the subject of the article. There is no call for the image to try to cover everything, and it's clearly impossible to do so in a large subject like this one. The body plan of an insect is however rather simple: 3-part body, 3 pairs of legs, appendages including antennae and mouthparts, and very often two pairs of wings. An image with an insect big enough to be intelligible and legible on a small screen, or in a thumbnail image, conveys this message clearly to readers; a composite image with a dozen or more micro-thumbnails crammed together may say "variety" but it also says "too small to see properly" to a large percentage of the audience. I'd say that a lead image should be exactly that: a single instance, big enough and clear enough to say just one thing: "insect". Scroll down in the article, and the physical diversity, the range of body plans for different habitats, the phylogenetic range, the various life-cycles, the different means of locomotion — diversity has many meanings for insects, and all are covered in the article: but they can't all be covered in the lead image, and nor should they be, it's at once impossible, unnecessary, and pointless to try. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:59, 8 May 2024 (UTC)