Portal talk:Biology/Archive 4

Proposed content
The purpose of proposed content is to encourage more regular updates and make them easier to carry out, and to give people a chance to decide the content of this portal. Follow the link to learn more:

/Proposed

Latin/Greek Roots and Pronunciation of Terms
Has anyone considered clarifying things a bit by adding latin/greek roots and pronunciation following the terms on the wiki bio related pages? I think it would be extremely helpful for students, like myself, who are learning an incredible amount of terms all at once. Any input?

Biology categorization
Hi -- the biology category is a bit unwieldy at the moment. Are other folks working on subcatting it? I propose, for starters, a subcat for divisions of biology -- Category:Types of biology but obviously, better terminology is okay. The notion is to fit molecular biology, microbiology, and so on, into a subcat. Then start working on the articles and other obvious subcategories. Other ideas? --lquilter 22:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I would recommend Category:Fields of biology or Category:Biological fields. Another possibility is Category:Biological disciplines, but sometimes a scientific "discipline" means something more specific than just an area of research (i.e., a discipline has professional infrastructure like journals and societies).  An easier and probably more useful possibility is to identify the articles in the category that should be just in a subcategory and prune the biology category from them; I'm sure half the articles currently in the biology category could be shunted to an existing subcategory, even many of the biological fields (since the main subdivisions of biology already have categories).--ragesoss 22:53, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yep, I'm doing the pruning now. Will hold off on any types/fields/disciplines until pruning is done & more discussion here. --lquilter 23:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * On taking a closer look, I agree, though... even just the number of categories in biology is overwhelming. I'm doing some pruning as well, but unfortunately some of it just moves the problem elsewhere.  Many of the subcategories (e.g., Category:Ecology) are massively overfilled themselves.--ragesoss 23:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, but, at least if they're in ecology we can then begin figuring out how we need to cat ecology. --lquilter 23:43, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. On a related note, I've proposed moving Category:Tree of life to Category:Organisms: Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_January_10.  In addition to being more intuitive, this would allow us to move categories like "Category:Aquatic organisms out of Biology.--ragesoss 23:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

HIV
Retro virus like HIV AIDS does have a reverse transcriptase which makes DNA copies after recognising a specific terminal repeats of nucleotides on the ss RNA strand. This might be possible to create a terminal or nonsense codon so that reverse transcriptase can not recognise it to make copies of DNA. Just like thymidine dimers created in exposure to UV light but HIV does not have DNA gyrase to repair it. Or it might be a nonsense idea Dr. Zubair SiddiqueZubair siddique (talk) 06:48, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Monotreme eggs information required
I have these last weeks requested in the talk pages of the following articles, Egg (biology) and monotremes, more information about monotreme eggs and images of them. I believe that there isn't very much information about this. I would like to know futher about the characteristics of these eggs, the phisiological differences between monotreme eggs and other eggs, like reptiles, birds or amphibius. I have heard that they are "rubbery" (?). Do they need to be kept warm (?) I would appretiate any information... --Francisco Valverde 19:41, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Megafauna
I'm new to this whole Project and Portal thing but I noticed a page which I recently overhauled, Megafauna is in need of further attention. It also is not part of any WikiProject. Just thought maybe someone here might want to look into it. --Scorpios 04:48, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Formating
The formating on the main page got messed up somehow. It needs to be fixed. Joe  I 04:45, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads up.--ragesoss 04:52, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Wow, that was fast :)  Joe   I 04:55, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

EMBL Reptile Database
Hello,

I don't know if you used to add links to the EMBL reptile database and related pages (www.embl.org) but the database has moved and is now hosted at www.tigr.org. The main page can be found here and the search engine for the database itself is here. The database maintainer told me that he still got several hits at the old address from wikipedia, so it would be a good idea to check and update the links.

Regards, Hexasoft 21:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Flower's name wanted!
Please help me to find this flower's name, species or tell me where I can ask for this help. Thank you very much! --Beyond silence 03:43, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Try posting it to the Flickr group "What Plant is This?".--ragesoss 03:45, 11 July 2007 (UTC)




 * Thanks --Beyond silence 07:17, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Where does the quiescent zone in the meristem come from during plant development?
I study biology and have a question concerning plant physiology (my textbook is Taiz & Zeiger). As you might know, the meristem is composed of the L1, L2 and L3 stem cells and beyond that is a "quiescent zone" with lower rate of cell devision. So my question is, where do these cells of the quiescent zone come from, from the L1, the L2 or from the L3 stemcells? I would be very glad if somebody could answer my questions. Thank you --hroest 20:21, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * You could also post at WikiProject Plants, they're fairly active. Richard001 02:18, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Related portals: rationale for preventing bloat
An editorial decision has been made to limit the number of portals linked to, in a hierarchical manner:


 * This portal links to Portal:Animals, but not to Portal:Fish, Portal:Amphibians and Reptiles, Portal:Arthropods, Portal:Birds, Portal:Cats, Portal:Dogs
 * This portal does link to Portal:Marine life, because marine life includes more than animals and (basal) plants; however, both marine life and animals link to Portal:Fish, Portal:Cetaceans, Portal:Sharks, so it's doubly justified to not include them again here - people can click through, the benefits of which are discussed below
 * This portal links to Portal:Extinct and Endangered Species, but not to Portal:Dinosaurs
 * This portal links to Portal:Neuroscience, but no longer to Portal:Mind and Brain and Portal:Psychology, which are linked from neuroscience
 * The possibility of avoiding links to Portal:History of science, Portal:Philosophy of science, and Portal:Scientific method exists, all of which are linked from Portal:Science

Samsara (talk • contribs) 17:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The science portals have now been reduced to one link. Samsara (talk • contribs) 18:14, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Benefits of clicking through
By clicking through, users see more of Wikipedia, become acquainted with its structure and diversity, and learn to understand the hierarchies that exist among subdisciplines and taxonomic groups. It also fits with what is known about learnability, discoverability, and ease of navigation. Additionally, this structure should help portals to better define their own scope and avoid overlap where possible, because they have fewer "related portals" to keep track of.

Samsara (talk • contribs) 17:56, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


 * embedding images is not the only objective of wikipedia. we should try to understand that by being more comprehensive and simple we can construct wikipedia in a better way. clicking through is not only accessibility, textual hyperlinks are enough. its worthless having graphics if doesn't satisfies the basic requirements for an encyclopedia. what you saying is not wrong but for a big portal like biology it is completely meaningless. see other portals like Portal:Science. graphics are not used there but the portal looks far beyond awesome. thanks, Sushant gupta (talk) 09:31, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Personally I think that Portal:Science is confusing to navigate. I already stated the reason that it's ok not have pictures there is that is the top of the hierarchy and needs to list everything. There is always a benefit for usability to including pictures that people can relate to. Every other featured portal uses images and while it would help for them to be standardized, removing them, making the portal text heavy, does not clarify form. pschemp | talk 22:38, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Merge
On the biology page it had been suggested that the table of "topics related to biology" be merged onto Portal:Biology/Major topics. The topics table has been converted into the Biology topics template, much as was done with the Earth template. Should the "Major topics" be merged with the Biology topics template? &mdash; RJH (talk) 16:45, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * That template currently contains too little actual biology. Samsara (talk • contribs) 20:57, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I merged everything that wasn't POV-heavy or frankly irrelevant. The template should probably be a subset of "major topics". Samsara (talk • contribs) 01:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you. &mdash; RJH (talk) 18:23, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Biology related hook that recently appeared at T:DYK

 * ...that the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack was the first bioterrorism attack in the United States, and one of only two confirmed terrorist uses of biological weapons to harm humans?

You may wish to add this to the Did you know? part of the portal, to be rotated through. It's up to you folks. Cheers, Cirt 07:31, 2 December 2007 (UTC).

Fishing portal
This is the icon, should we ever decide to include it:

Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Content we should select
I have been thinking about what it means for Portal:Biology that there are so many portals lower down in the hierarchy, and what the point is in our selecting content, when the same content might be simultaneously featured on one of the sub-portals. The conclusion that I came to is that as the central rallying point for all things biological, our mission should be to feature content that is not covered by one of the other existing portals. I wanted to share some of my thoughts on this with you.

The argument for featuring such content is that it would not otherwise be covered by a portal, so we would be fighting bias on WP, which is a good thing. It might also inspire others to create portals for those various kinds of content, by being exposed to it here.

However, we have recently featured quite a few evolutionary biology topics. This was made possible by considerable editing effort to promote several evolutionary biology topics to FA status, by several editors including myself. I can see now that this may have been a good thing as there seems to be less pressure from creationists on evolutionary biology articles than there was a few months ago. I think we would be doing society a dis-service if we showcased only one side of biology, even though evolution is one of the major unifying themes (paraphrasing Dobzhansky and Maynard Smith and probably others). I would like to think that any content not based on empirical results from well-controlled experiments can still be kept out of scientific articles even if topics that are under attack from editors with pseudoscientific viewpoints aren't regularly featured.

The next task would be to identify topics that do not appear as selected content on other portals. Does such content exist? Samsara (talk • contribs) 08:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)


 * It seems that fungi aren't covered yet. Samsara (talk • contribs) 16:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Link for "Requests" from the Portal page
The link goes to a page that does not have any Biology requests. As far as I've gotten through the maze those would be here Requested articles/Natural sciences/Biology. Could someone check if I got that right and change the link, please.71.236.23.111 (talk) 18:56, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ You were right. GoEThe (talk) 21:20, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Genetically modified food
Hi, I'm not certain if this is the right project to bring this up, but I've been monitoring GM food for some time and would like to request assistance. I don't know enough about the subject to build a better article, and recent editing by anti-science POV editor pushing organic farming has been inserting nonsense into almost every paragraph. The page requires significant cleanup and some attention from people with a better grounding in the subject. If anyone could take a look it would be hugely appreciated. Thanks, Doc  Tropics  04:46, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Cervical rib
I don't know what project/portal to contact, since this may bridge mammals, reptiles etc. or even be paleontology. I'd like s.o. to have a look at Cervical rib which currently is an article about a human medical condition. AFAIK there are animals for whom a cervical rib is quite normal. If s.o. could please have a look and either put in a disambig. for animal links or a paragraph in the article. THANKS 71.236.26.74 (talk) 05:41, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Toxicology Task Force
Just wanted to announce the creation of a new Toxicology Task Force under WikiProject Medicine. Feel free to come and sign up. Thanks -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 04:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Ecology - Biology Portals section
There is an error in the Biology Portals section above the Ecology link. I do not have sufficient knowledge to fix it. Andrew Colvin • Talk 21:59, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Atoms and Molecules — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.184.213.143 (talk) 08:45, 13 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Could you please be more specific as to what the error is and where it's located? I scanned the portal for errors above an Ecology link (there is more than one) and didn't find anything.  Thanks!  -- MisterDub (talk &#149; contribs) 14:52, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

strep=stap
--Geminivalerie (talk) 07:53, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Merge Methylase and Methyltransferase
Could you please have a look at the two articles. IMHO they describe the same class of enzymes. --92.203.51.189 (talk) 14:05, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Covering every plant in Gibraltar Botanic Gardens as part of GibraltarpediA
I help run a project called GibraltarpediA, we are trying to cover as much as possible in Gibraltar in as many languages as possible. The project is based on MonmouthpediA, where we created 550+ new articles in 30 languages in around 4 months, Monmouth became the world’s first Wikipedia town.

As part of GibraltarpediA we aim to cover every plant in the Gibraltar Botanic Gardens and create QRpedia codes (a type of bar code your phone can read through it's camera that automatically takes you through to a Wikipedia in your own language) in the garden to give people easy access to the information. As far as I know the first botanic garden to do this. A full list of the plants is available here, I would estimate around half already have some information in English but many have an article in other languages already.

We’ve started the Gibraltar Challenge to reward contributors where you can win books and tshirts etc. We’d really love people from WikiProject Biology to be involved, you can find out more by clicking here.

Many thanks

Mrjohncummings (talk) 18:31, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Bird article name (capitalisation)
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Crowned Crane about the title of four articles. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. Mama meta modal (talk) 15:27, 23 February 2014 (UTC).
 * Do not hesitate to come and give your opinion. It would be so logic to apply the (same) usual naming rules to all animals, including birds... Click here to go to the talk. Mama meta modal (talk) 17:23, 8 March 2014 (UTC).

Request for comments
There is now also an ongoing request for comments on the same subject: Talk:Crowned Crane.

Do not hesitate to come and comment on this question. Mama meta modal (talk) 08:53, 16 March 2014 (UTC).

Consensus
The discussion was closed (and the pages moved) on 26 March 2014, see Talk:Crowned crane for details.

Mama meta modal (talk) 20:50, 26 March 2014 (UTC).


 * Move review for species pages at Move review/Log/2014 March. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:30, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

New discussion
The important discussion started on Talk:Crowned crane and Move review/Log/2014 March now moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.

Mama meta modal (talk) 20:56, 9 April 2014 (UTC).
 * The consensus is now clear. The relevant pages will soon be checked and made consistent with Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style.
 * H. H. Wander Strata (talk) 23:06, 2 May 2014 (UTC).

No 'Growth'
I just discovered that the encyclopedia completely lacks an article on Growth (growth is a dab page right now). What a bizarre omission: it isn't as if there's nothing to say on the subject. There isn't one on Primary growth in plants, either (it's a sad redirect to Secondary growth, which frankly doesn't even cover the subject). Is it a conspiracy? It's hard to think of any other equivalently enormous topic that hasn't even been started. Oh, by the way, I came here to report that I'd unlinked "individual growth" — it turns out to be about something psychological (sounds New Agey) rather than the g-subject itself. So that's 3 articles that don't exist... Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:03, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

No Updates
There has been no update for more than two years ie since my update on 2013. hence today i updated featured article and featured picture. Requesting all peoples to please come forward and make this portal live again --Irvin calicut (talk) 10:06, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Plant mite taxonomy identification
I've made the microscopic photo of the plant mite, but I can't identify it. Need help with it. Mite was took from fatshedera. Mite is about 100 µm long. Look like it is afraid of bright light. Most of the them were on the bottom part of the leaf. Гуменюк И.С. (talk) 18:29, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

No Updates or call for making this portal alive
Nothing has changed even after a year today i updated featured article and featured picture, after a year ie 2015 august. Irvin calicut (talk) 09:07, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Traits passed down in cultures
Hey Biologists, could you tell me a term for traits that are passed down from generation to generation in families or cultures? The term escapes me. It is used in psychoanalysis for almost identical heredetary psychological traits, but the term escapes me and has for a while. :) --85.150.152.71 (talk) 21:31, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Draft:The velvet complex
Can somebody take a look at this, please I did a search for this gbooks, and just online, and so many links came. It seems to be in every biologic system, and is primary, but no mention of the proteins in WP. The work seems to have been done in 60's and 70's. All the ref are super specific. Thanks. scope_creep (talk) 01:47, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Village Pump proposal to delete all Portals
Editors might be interested to see a discussion concerning the proposed deletion of all Portals across Wikipedia. See Village_pump_(proposals) Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 19:26, 10 April 2018 (UTC)