Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)

In general, use the common name for page titles: Black-footed Ferret, not Mustella nigripes, Peregrine Falcon not Falco peregrinus. Be aware of alternative names. The European Arctic Skua[?] is the same species as the North American Parasitic Jaeger[?], so a redirect should be created to whichever article is written first from the other.

Beware of informal common names. Many species have multiple common names; however, only one of these is usually recognised as formally correct. For example, the Southern Boobook is known in various parts of the world as "ruru", "mopoke", "morepork", "boobook", "New Zealand Owl", "Tasmanian Spotted Owl", and so on. By all means create redirects from these colloquial names, but place the main entry under the official common name—in this case, "Southern Boobook".

The Latin binomial name of a species should appear in the opening line of the entry, as this is the only universally recognized name for any species. Alternative names should be mentioned in the text where applicable, with bold type in the opening line of the entry if they are in wide use, or elsewhere in the article (with or without the bold type) if they are less-used. This is usually a matter for individual judgement.

Sometimes exceptions need to be made; most creatures do not have a formal common name. Some distinct groups are known only by their scientific name. In other cases a succinct single group name is preferred to a title that amounts to a list of animals. The sub-family name Dicrurinae[?], for example, is a much better title than monarch flycatchers, flycatchers, fantails, drongos and the Magpie-lark[?].

The name of an individual bird or mammal species is often found capitalised, but this is considerably disputed. Various ornithological societies have made a strong case in favour of this convention for naming birds. The case is much weaker for mammals. The underlying rationale is that this signals to the reader that we are indicating a particular, exact species and avoiding ambiguity. The phrase "in Australia there are many Common Starlings" indicates a large number of Sturnus vulgaris. In contrast, the phrase "in Australia there are many common starlings" indicates several different species of starling. The hyphenated part of a species name, however, is not usually capitalised if it describes the creature. For example, Black-footed Ferret, Red-winged Blackbird. It is capitalised in, for example Wilson's Storm-Petrel[?]. If in doubt, check with a field guide or official list.

When you create a new entry, whatever the capitalisation chosen, always create a redirect in the alternative case. For example, name the entry Bald Eagle but create a redirect to it from bald eagle or vice versa. Creating the redirect is not optional, but will not be needed for single word species names. (See Wikipedia:How to use redirect pages). There are some rare instances where lower case and capitalised versions have different meanings, such as barn owl/Barn Owl, and, in particular, wood warbler/Wood Warbler. Suitable links or disambiguation should then be used.

The name of a group of species, or an individual creature of indeterminate species, is not capitalised: ferret, mouse, kingfisher, turtle dove.

Orders, families and other taxa above genus level are written with an initial capital and in roman (not italic) text: bats belong to the class Chiroptera; rats and mice are members of the family Muridae and the order Rodentia.

The names of genera are always italicised and capitalised: Turdus, Falco, Anas.

The second part of a binomial species name is never capitalised (even when derived from a proper noun), always italicised, and is always preceeded by either the genus name (or an abbreviation of it if the full version has occurred previously): Alcedo pusilla or A. pusilla, Cisticola juncidis or C. juncidis.

See also:

• Naming conventions
• Binomial names:
• WikiProject Tree of Life
• WikiProject Birds