Talk:Adaptation/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: William Harris (talk · contribs) 07:16, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Hello Chiswick Chap, thankyou for your development of this article. As with our work on Hybrid, I shall place comments outside of the matrix ("boxes") and tick sections off in the matrix when these meet the criteria. I understand that we shall commence on or near 28 December, however there is no rush. Regards,  William Harris talk  07:16, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Splendid preparation and a credit to you; the article will see in the New Year at a different quality level. Three things for when we commence:  William Harris talk  02:29, 20 December 2019 (UTC)
 * 2d - two paragraphs will need to be rewritten to avoid plagiarism
 * 1a and 6b - I have some pedantic suggestions which you may decide, or not, to implement. Either way they are not a concern.
 * Thank you very much, . I'll address the comments when I see them! Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:12, 28 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Welcome back! Below is the list.  William Harris Canis lupis track.svg talk Canis lupis track.svg 23:24, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Item 2d
The following extracts from the article appear to be directly quoted from http://vibory.info/adaptation.html and therefore WP:COPYVIO.

"In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the population during that process. Thirdly, it is a phenotypic trait or adaptive trait, with a functional role in each individual organism, that is maintained and has evolved through natural selection.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed a tendency for organisms to become more complex, moving up a ladder of progress, plus "the influence of circumstances," usually expressed as use and disuse. This second, subsidiary element of his theory is what is now called Lamarckism, a proto-evolutionary hypothesis of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, intended to explain adaptations by natural means."


 * The phrase "proposed a tendency for organisms to become more complex, moving up a ladder of progress, plus "the influence of circumstances", usually expressed as use and disuse." was already in the article in 2014, so GOBI must have copied that from Wikipedia, not the reverse; this also shows that the paragraph was built up in stages by normal editing, not by a single copy-and-paste event. I recall phrasing the first "In biology" paragraph myself, in 2017, and I didn't use GOBI then either, so the simplest explanation is that sometime from 2017 onwards GOBI copied both paragraphs in an unacknowledged copy-and-paste from Wikipedia. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:05, 29 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, that sounds very reasonable.  William Harris Canis lupis track.svg talk Canis lupis track.svg 10:51, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Item 6b
Some suggestions that may aid a reader's clarity.
 * Section "History", image - change complexifying force to a force that makes living things more complex
 * "complexifying force" is the direct and usual translation of Lamarck's phrase.


 * Section "What adaptation is" - possibly add an image of Darwin's finches as illustration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_finches#Species
 * We already have Darwin's finches imaged in the lead section.


 * Section "Adaptivness and fitness", image - could be moved down towards the bottom of the section and closer to Sewall Wright
 * Done; the trade-off with the desire to have image beside relevant text are the quite strong pressure to have images at the top of a section, and not overlapping section boundaries.


 * Section "Co-adaptation", image - hyperlink "co-adaption" (once again); I believe that there are readers who only read the lede and the pictures, and this extra linking caters to those
 * Done.


 * Section "Mimicry", image - Change A and B show real wasps; the rest are Batesian mimics: to Image A and B show real wasps; the others show Batesian mimics:
 * Done.


 * All good.  William Harris Canis lupis track.svg talk Canis lupis track.svg 10:52, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Item 1a
Some grammatical items that you may concur with:


 * Section Lede, para 3, the rate of evolution, as measured - no need for the comma?
 * Done.


 * Section "History", para 1, final cause (~purpose) - should that tilde be there?
 * Removed.


 * Section "History", para 3, Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss - change to Voltaire's satire Dr. Pangloss
 * Done.


 * Section "History", para 3, quasi-evolutionary views, as the Bilgewater Treatises - change to quasi-evolutionary views, referred to these as the Bilgewater Treatises
 * Read it again. It runs "lampooned by Robert Knox ... as the Bilgewater Treatises", which is correct.


 * Section "What adaption is", para 2, A favourite example - favourite reminds me of ice-cream, why this word rather than popular (if that is the case), and favoured by whom?
 * Reworded.


 * Section "What adaption is", para 3, a given external environment - change to simply a given environment
 * Done.


 * Section "What adaption is not", para 2, a given genotype to change its phenotype - these are 2 key drivers and the article might benefit from a very quick and simple definition of these, something along the lines of a given genetic type (genotype) to change its observable characteristics (phenotype)
 * Done.


 * Section "What adaption is not", para 3, Fecundity goes down - change to Reproduction declines
 * Reworded.


 * Section "Niche construction", para 1 - these animals' genes - change to genes of these animals (before one of our North American cousins deletes the possessive plural apostrophe altogether!)
 * Done, but we reserve the right to use British and other non-American forms of English.....


 * Section "Non-adaptive traits", para 1 - Some traits do not appear to be adaptive, that is, they have a neutral or deleterious effect on fitness in the current environment. Because genes often have pleiotropic effects, not all traits - change to Some traits do not appear to be adaptive because they have a neutral or deleterious effect on fitness in the current environment. Genes often have pleiotropic effects, and so not all traits
 * Reworded.


 * I've never done that before - assessing an article while live updates are being provided from the other side of the globe. Well done!  William Harris Canis lupis track.svg talk Canis lupis track.svg 10:59, 29 December 2019 (UTC)