Talk:Lobster

America-centrism

Somewhat confused by the entirely US-centric examples given here, considering that lobsters exist, and are consumed, all over the world. Dismas444 (talk) 19:55, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

@Dismas444: Agreed, see below at #Lobsters and scampi. I'm going to start fixing this soon. --Macrakis (talk) 15:37, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Color prevalence table makes no sense

Of course, various proportions of all lobsters have various colors.

But the sum of all these fractions must add up to the number 1. (Or if expressed as percentages, they must add up to 100%.)

But it is easy to see that in the Lobster color chart the prevalence proportions add up to far less than the number 1.

Why is that? Either the numbers are significantly wrong, or else one or more colors are entirely omitted from the chart.

I hope someone knowledgeable about this subject can fix this obvious mistake.2601:200:C000:1A0:B948:3237:8DF:ADC2 (talk) 15:15, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

"Homaridae" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Homaridae and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 March 23#Homaridae until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 05:38, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

scampi

@Cougroyalty Hi just wondering did you actually read the section? "Commercially important species include two species of Homarus from the northern Atlantic Ocean and scampi " includes no reference to the dish which is also called scampi. the page scampi is entirely about the dish. these are completely unrelated. Jamiehayn (talk) 21:49, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Yup, I read it, and I still have my reservations about that entire paragraph. (I kinda think we should just delete the whole paragraph.) But anyways, the sentence as written uses the word scampi, with a link. The link should match the word, based on my understanding of WP:Link. If you think scampi should be changed to Macrobrachium rosenbergii, just remove the word scampi entirely. However, and more importantly, Macrobrachium rosenbergii is not a lobster, but rather a shrimp, belonging to the infraorder Caridea. So it shouldn't be mentioned here on the Lobster page. The scampi page mentions langoustine (Nephrops norvegicus), which IS a member of the Lobster family Nephropidae, so this is the correct species for this paragraph. Perhaps the link could be changed directly to that species, instead of to the scampi page, if you so desire. (Also, in looking at the Scampi (disambiguation) page, it does describe the different species considered scampi, some of which are lobsters, and some of which are shrimp.) Cougroyalty (talk) 15:42, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Ah my mistake for using the wrong species. In that case it does seem the disambiguation page is the most fitting. Jamiehayn (talk) 18:39, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Lobsters and scampi

The body of this article is almost entirely about the American lobster (Homarus americanus) although it is nominally about all the Nephropidae/Homaridae. I plan to merge the American-lobster specific content into American lobster, which overlaps significantly with this article and add some clarifying language in the lead. --Macrakis (talk) 15:34, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

Scope of this article

This article currently covers the zoological "true lobsters" (Nephropidae/Homaridae), which include Homarus spp., Nephrops spp., and Metanephrops spp.

This is not consistent with our policy on article titles, which tells us to use the common name. Outside of its technical usage in zoology, "lobster" does not mean the Nephropidae. What exactly it means depends on the region. For example, in New England and Atlantic Canada, "lobster" invariably means Homarus americanus and in the UK, it means Homarus gammarus ("native lobster") as well as the imported Homarus americanus. But in Florida, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and other English-speaking regions, it often means other species, such as spiny lobsters, slipper lobsters, squat lobsters, reef lobsters, etc. Conversely, it never means Nephrops spp. or Metanephrops spp. in non-technical language, even if "Norway lobster" is one of the common names of N. norvegicus.

Therefore, I plan to move this article to Nephropidae. The article Lobster will then cover all the crustaceans worldwide called lobsters; that will include the first two sections of the current Lobster (disambiguation) article, but with more discussion. I will also move the content that is specifically about the American and European lobsters to Homarus (as mentioned above) or Homarus americanus.

Redirects will go to the appropriate articles:

• True lobster => Nephropidae
• Atlantic lobster => Homarus (Nephrops lives in the Atlantic, but is not called "Atlantic lobster")

The biggest challenge will be straightening out links to Lobster, which currently refer to a variety of different things, sometimes the broad category, sometimes specific kinds. Many existing links are incorrect. For example, in Economy of Honduras, lobster linked to the current lobster article, but in fact Honduras doesn't have Nephropidae, only spiny lobster. On the other hand, the link to Lobster in Template:Seafood presumably should cover all kinds of lobster, and so continue to link to Lobster, which will cover them.

Comments? --Macrakis (talk) 18:04, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

Sounds good. We recently just did the same thing with Crab, so that could be a good example. Cougroyalty (talk) 15:08, 3 August 2026 (UTC)