Template talk:Speciesbox

Option to use more than two statuses?

Currently, this template only supports |status= and |status2=, however, some species have been assessed under more than two of the possible status options - eg. Cladonia perforata and the San Marcos salamander both have statuses on the IUCN Red List, NatureServe, and the Endangered Species Act. In these cases, editors are left to their own discretion choosing which two statuses are worth including in the speciesbox. My preference is to prioritise the Red List and NatureServe assessments over the ESA, but not everyone will agree with me. I don't see any reason we shouldn't be able to include all three though, and would like to see a |status3= for both the sake of completeness and to avoid conflicts between editors who disagree on which systems should take priority. Thoughts? Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 11:06, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

@Ethmostigmus: implementing the change requires |status3=, |status3_system= and |status3_ref= to be added to both this template and {{Taxobox/core}}, which it feeds. If there's a clear consensus, it can be done, but we should always be slow to change {{Taxobox/core}} with its 473,000+ transclusions.

I'm on the fence at present. I see the logic of the argument, but is this a slippery slope? Will the next step be allowing four status options? Taxoboxes should not get more and more cluttered. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:44, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Like you I'm on the fence. I've seen a few cases where three assessments might have been worth showing, but never one where there are four that aren't obviously redundant, so I wouldn't worry about a slippery slope. When the assessments have graphics, the taxobox starts to get cluttered with two (e.g. the examples above) so three with graphics wouldn't look good. On the other hand, one with graphics and a couple of text ones would be fine.  —  Jts1882 | talk  14:07, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Returning to this discussion, as I've just come across a situation in which I think displaying three statuses would be useful but not quite so cluttered: the Sarracenia species. Several (maybe all, I haven't checked) of these species have been assessed for both the Red List and NatureServe and are listed on either CITES Appendix I or II. The CITES status outputs as text only, with no graphic, and only takes up one line, so the use of all three would be less cluttered than the example Jts1882 provided with three graphics. Is there a way we can implement a |status3= that only displays as a line of text, or a separate |cites= parameter to allow for this? Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 08:35, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

I've come across some more taxa with three or even four relevant statuses:

• The Javan mongoose has an IUCN assessment, a NatureServe assessment, and is listed on Appendix III of CITES.
• Stony corals present in North America frequently have an IUCN assessment, a NatureServe assessment, and are covered by CITES (the entire order is listed on Appendix II, excluding fossils) and/or the Endangered Species Act. Some North American stony corals will only have one or two, but an example of a taxon to which all four are applicable is pillar coral, which currently is using its two |status= params for the relevant IUCN and ESA statuses. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 06:38, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

I've been working on adding NatureServe statuses to all applicable species articles (currently focusing on molluscs) and found many more examples of species with IUCN and NatureServe assessments in addition to a CITES listing. Hawaiian land snails like as the many Achatinella species are a good example, with almost all of them having all three, the same issue applies to the Sarracenia species. If putting 3 statuses (or 2 statuses + a separate |cites= param? I quite like that idea) is a no go, I think it would be helpful to at least reach consensus on which statuses should be prioritised in cases where 3 or more apply. In adding NatureServe statuses to articles I am currently just skipping articles which already have both status params in use, which prevents articles from being automatically placed in the relevant NatureServe status category. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 05:44, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

I'd be fine with |cites=. I'd also be fine with removing CITES altogether from taxoboxes and just mentioning it in the body of the article. The problem I have with CITES in taxoboxes is that it isn't very nuanced, and CITES Appendices include some higher taxa. All orchids (except Vanilla), and all parrots (with a couple exceptions) are CITES listed, but there invasive orchids (e.g. Eulophia graminea) and parrots (monk parakeet). It's not clear to me whether we should give CITES status for species when the actual entity in the Appendix is a family or order.

If there are more statuses than 2, I would generally prioritize non-legislative statuses (IUCN/NatureServe) over legislative statuses (ESA/COSEWIC). But I'm not sure about prioritizing both IUCN and NatureServe over ESA for an ESA listed species. Plantdrew (talk) 20:34, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Speciesbox
Conservation status
Vulnerable (IUCN 3.1)
Threatened (ESA)
Critically Imperiled (NatureServe)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Amphibia
Order:	Urodela
Family:	Plethodontidae
Genus:	Eurycea
Species:	E. nana
Binomial name
Eurycea nana Bishop, 1941

Here's how it would look (see right). Is it too much?  —  Jts1882 | talk  14:32, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

The problem for me is that it appears above the classification, which is the core purpose of a taxobox. In your example, you are likely to have to scroll down on a mobile device to get to classification. Maybe if second and third statuses were initially hidden, with a show/hide control? Otherwise it makes the multiple statuses too prominent, taking up too much of the space. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:27, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. Perhaps the conservation status should be moved lower down, perhaps after the range maps.  —  Jts1882 | talk  17:06, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you both for your input!

I've seen a few cases where three assessments might have been worth showing, but never one where there are four that aren't obviously redundant, so I wouldn't worry about a slippery slope. exactly what I was thinking - if we exclude CITES (which I think is reasonable, given that it takes up so little space in the taxobox - honestly, I would support a |cites= option separate from |status=) three is the absolute most I've seen in terms of statuses with a graphic. We have quite a few compatible conservation status frameworks listed at Template:Taxobox/species/doc, and while more than two of these (again, excluding CITES) applying to a single taxon is rare, it does happen. To be perfectly honest, I'm of the opinion that the legislative statuses like ESA, DEC, and QLDNCA don't really fit well in the speciesbox and are better discussed in the body, but that's just me.

one with graphics and a couple of text ones would be fine. If the the more niche statuses could be simplified to resemble the CITES statuses, that would certainly reduce clutter, but not sure how feasible/popular that would be.

Perhaps the conservation status should be moved lower down, perhaps after the range maps. I would generally oppose this, I think conservation status is valuable information and looks best below the image and above classification, but I certainly see your point about clutter. I would definitely prefer making the conservation status section (semi-?) collapsible to moving it below the classification section.

If we want to stick to a limit of two to avoid cluttering the taxobox, I would at least like to establish which statuses should take priority. My personal approach is to prioritise global/international statuses (eg. global Red List assessments) over regional statuses (eg. NatureServe, regional Red List assessments) and NGO-assigned statuses (eg. IUCN and NatureServe) over government-assigned/legislative statuses (eg. ESA). So, for an example of a North American species, my preferred order would be IUCN -> NatureServe -> ESA, or for an Australian species IUCN -> EPBC -> state/territory level legislative status eg. QLDNCA. I generally think country or state/territory/province etc. level statuses don't belong in the speciesbox unless there is no applicable global or regional status. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk |  ://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=hastemplate%3Aspeciesbox++insource%3A%2Fstatus_system+%2A%3D+%2AIUCN%2F&title=Special:Search&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns0=1 ) 03:40, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

The regional statuses should only be used for endemics. The IUCN status is nearly always the first listed (in 70,000 cases). There are around 200 in status2, but almost half are regional or subspecies IUCN assessments with the global IUCN species assessment first. There are 120 speciesboxes where the the global IUCN status is second. I think there is a good case for changing the order in these cases

One solution would be to not show the graphic for the third status, or perhaps even the second (is more than one graphic needed?). If only one graphic was shown, adding the third or fourth status wouldn't take up much space.  —  Jts1882 | talk  08:01, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

I support only showing the graphic for the first status. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:34, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

I've added support for a third status with parameters |status3=, |status3_ref= and |status3_system=. The image is suppressed for the third status. This is the minimal change, leaving all current taxoboxes unchanged, but now allowing a third status as a single line text entry. Suppressing the second image probably needs more input to get a consensus.  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:47, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

References

Edit pencil linking to nonexistent Template:Taxonomy/

Does anyone know why the edit pencil in the speciesbox at Draft:Greater Bermuda land snail is linking to the nonexistent template {{Taxonomy/}}? The speciesbox template is not generating any error messages. From what I can tell from a couple of discussions, it appears that the template used to exist, and possibly generated an error message, but it was deleted in 2022 as unused. I suspect that it was only temporarily unused (except for a couple of sandboxes, which makes sense if there were errors) because there were no errors in relevant pages at the time.

If anyone has access to the contents of the template before it was deleted, that would be helpful. If anyone knows why a page would call this nonexistent template, that would also be helpful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:39, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

I received information from an admin that the contents of the deleted template were as follows:

the revision before the 16 Jan 2022 was:

{Placeholder <strong class="error">error message</strong>}.
<noinclude>
{{for|a list of templates in the "Template:Taxonomy/" namespace|Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Taxonomy/}}

This template is called whenever processing taxonomy templates passes the top of the hierarchy, because the parent of "Life" is the empty string.

Deleting this placeholder template will raise false errors with [[Template:Taxobox]], through [[Template:Taxobox/taxonomy cell]].  The content of this template must begin with a brace for proper functioning.
</noinclude>

It appears that Speciesbox is still calling this template under one or more error conditions, and it should probably exist so that we can display and track these errors. Does anyone have any further information? – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:35, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Replying to myself: It appears that at Draft:Greater Bermuda land snail, if I delete the empty |parent=, the call to {{Taxonomy/}} disappears, and the edit pencil links to the correct template. That's not really a fix, though. The template should ignore empty parameters, and the edit pencil should work if there is a valid template for the classification. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:45, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Adding support for Module:Infobox mapframe

Given the results of this search, I am going to add support for Module:Infobox mapframe to this template. Per the latest param report there are ZERO pages using |range_map4= (which isn't even documented as a working parameter, but which is in the code). So I am going to coopt that field and use it for the mapframe. Will have to be explicitly turned on using |mapframe=yes, but will unify all the pages to use the same style of mapframe.

Any questions, comments, concerns or objections? Let me know! -Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 07:36, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for updating the formatting for the many lichen instances! I'll adjust my species article template so it uses the new formatting. 19:05, 7 December 2025 (UTC) Esculenta (talk) 19:05, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

User:Esculenta My pleasure! I confess I know NOTHING about species in general. This is not my area of expertise. But hope this helps. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 19:08, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

Help with adding conservation status visual aid icons to Queensland Nature Conservation Act 1992

The conservation status system QLDNCA does not show status visual aid box in speciesbox. It pretty much uses the same codes the IUCN 3.1 codes with the exception of SL (Special Least Concern) between Least Concern (LC) and Near-Threatened (NT). If anyone knows how to add it, it would be much appreciated. Here's what it looks like currently:

Speciesbox
Conservation status
Endangered (NCA)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
Clade:	Embryophytes
Clade:	Tracheophytes
Clade:	Spermatophytes
Clade:	Angiosperms
Clade:	Eudicots
Clade:	Rosids
Order:	Sapindales
Family:	Rutaceae
Genus:	Phebalium
Species:	P. distans
Binomial name
Phebalium distans

Canofcatfood (talk) 01:02, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

If you create suitable images for the QLDNCA, I can add them. However, I don't think we should use the IUCN images, as that could lead people to think they are IUCN assessments. Regular readers will be familiar with the images and may not even read the text.  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:32, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

@Canofcatfood: This is actually handled by {{Taxobox/species}}; in principle it's better to ask such questions at its talk page.

@Jts1882: In principle I agree we should not use icons from other status systems. However, it's not clear to me that all of the systems currently using icons actually do have their own. If you look, for example, at the EPBC icons (used on Phebalium distans), File:Status EPBC EN.svg says that the colours come from the IUCN categories. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:42, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

But it is a custom graphic. The IUCN doesn't use the protected bracket or the CD status (the LC/cd was dropped ages ago). I think using the same colours is useful when similar criteria are used.  —  Jts1882 | talk  17:41, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

From my observations a lot of native flora in Australia do not have an IUCN status and probably wont so a long time as its a slow process. I've seen some cases where the IUCN status is least concern while the species is endangered under the NCA and EPBC acts. The Nature Conservation Act uses the same criteria for listing threatened species as the IUCN red list. The icons could be made to be a square so it can look different. Canofcatfood (talk) 10:29, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

Using similar designs is fine, especially when similar criteria are used. The graphic isn't an IUCN one; as far as I can tell it was created for Wikipedia. The addition of SL (Special Least Concern) would distinguish it and using squares is not a bad idea. I meant to mention it above, but one of the issues with reusing the IUCN graphics is that if someone clicks on the image they get take to the page saying it is an IUCN status. A similar custom graphic wouldn't have this problem.  —  Jts1882 | talk  17:41, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

Chromosome number should be included

There should be an option to add chromosome number of a species Talented-Intellectual-69 (talk) 09:00, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

The purpose of taxoboxes is primarily to show classification, and secondarily some nomenclatural information. Chromosome number is a different issue. Taxoboxes are arguably already over-cluttered. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:01, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Diagram of conservation status

Clicking on the diagram of the conservation status should ideally open a page that further describes the diagram (e.g. the articles IUCN Red List or Conservation status), not the photo of the diagram. Z 10:08, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

The links to IUCN Red List and the particular conservation status (e.g. Vulnerable) are there. The link of the image is dictated by the copyright of the images, which needs attribution, which can be done through the link. The images would have to be recategorised by their creator to allow using the link for something else.  —  Jts1882 | talk  12:05, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

I came here to recommend the same thing. The image looks awfully like buttons so my first instinct is to press them to figure out what the other symbols mean. The copyright says we can provide a link "in any reasonable manner". Could the commons link be moved somehow so clicking the image goes somewhere more useful? – Farkle Griffen (talk) 13:12, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

At one time the taxobox images didn't link to the Commons source, but this was forced on us by the copyright requirement, as Jts1882 notes above. If the image linked somewhere more useful, how would that display the copyright? Peter coxhead (talk) 06:46, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Here is the discussion explaining the change: Template_talk:Taxobox#Linking_to_CC-BY_images. The creator of the images would have to change the permissions on Commons.  —  Jts1882 | talk  13:40, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

To clarify, by "could the link be moved" I mean, for example, moving it to a footnote: , a fine print below the image: ^{[​Image attribution]} or even just a link using: ^©. Could something along those lines work? I think that fits the description of "provide a link to the license [...] in any reasonable manner". – Farkle Griffen (talk) 21:53, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Two possibilities:

1. Displaying the image as a thumb, which has its own link [[File:Status_iucn2.3_VU.svg|alt= Vulnerable species|thumb]] . It might be possible without the frame.

1. The info icon as used in with imagemap. The icon can be better positioned (see Mammal for a proper example). An imagemap might also be better in that the different categories could be linked.

I'll try and explore these options properly.  —  Jts1882 | talk  07:10, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

On #1, it looks like the frame has to be shown, which just adds clutter to the taxobox.

On #2, the info icon has limited placements (the four corners), which all overlap the current status images. The image map (second image to right) links to all the different conservation statuses.

A third option could be to use the imagemap with the target circle linking to the further information on the conservation status and the rest of the image linking to the commons page for attribution (see example to right with VU status). This way most of the image links to attribution, but people who click the colouredd circle would get more information. I wonder if this would satisfy the attribution requirements.  —  Jts1882 | talk  15:30, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

For #1, you could use the "frameless" parameter [[File:Status_iucn2.3_VU.svg|alt=Vulnerable species|link=[[Vulnerable species]]|frameless|right]]

For #2, could we just make an extended image with more whitespace to the right to make room for the info icon? – Farkle Griffen (talk) 16:17, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Another idea, though I don't know how well it would work in the template, is to use a table for #2, and make the info icon its own link? – Farkle Griffen (talk) 18:01, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

For option 3, why don't we link all of them? I think most of the image still links to the commons page. Does this work? – Farkle Griffen (talk) 20:17, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

On #1, if we use frameless we lose the icon linking attribution and we are back where we started, not properly attributing the images.

On #2, we could remake the images with the space, but there are a lot of images to redo.

On "another idea", a nested table just adds to the complexity. These are best avoided for accessibility reasons (e.g. screen readers). Adding a separate icon somehow is certainly something to consider. For instance, the frame icon could be added to the text line, which would be familiar.

On #3, I don't think linking all the circles makes sense. If he status is VU, why does it help to link EN? It could lead to confusion. There are links to the status and system articles in the text under the images. For this option the image does link to the attribution (which we must do with the current images), except the coloured circle, which provides an intuitive link to more information on that status.  —  Jts1882 | talk  08:35, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

References

Suggestion for template

I suggest the Speciesbox template have parameter(s) for recordings of animals, particularly birds. As of right now, to have recordings of bird vocalizations, the caption parameter is being used in the template. –The Twists and Turns talk|my edits 22:23, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

We've just been discussing that over at Template:Automatic_taxobox#Use_of_two_images_+_audio_file_in_taxobox?. Plantdrew (talk) 23:02, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

Okay, I just replied there. –The Twists and Turns talk|my edits 23:47, 31 May 2026 (UTC)