Talk:Reinforcement (speciation)

Article is too technical
The lead to this article is completely incomprehensible to a general reader, and even to one with significant education in the biological sciences. The diagram illustrating the lead does not help in the slightest: if anything, it adds further layers of jargonistic unexplained concepts.86.43.168.153 (talk) 14:36, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I reworded the first paragraph to be a little easier to understand. The sentence you provided was inaccurate. Reinforcement is speciation caused by selection against unfit hybrids. Additionally, the original first sentence contained the appropriate links to be able to understand the fundamentals of the topic. The reworded one did not. Speciation, reproductive isolation, hybrids, fitness, etc are all important to understanding a rather complex and technical topic.  Andrew Z. Colvin  •  Talk  22:22, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

"Secondary contact" is not synonymous
My PhD thesis is in speciation and I have a peer-reviewed journal article published on the topic of reinforcement. I can say with 99% confidence that the evo bio community does not use secondary contact to mean reinforcement. Anyone who might use the term in this imprecise manner would have it pointed out by a reviewer. I don't have Dobzhansky's book at hand, but even if he did use the terminology like that in 1937, it is not how we use the term today. Yel D&#39;ohan (talk) 15:42, 1 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it would help the reader if the term secondary contact was referred to, not as a synonym, but as a term that has been applied in regards to reinforcement? Currently there is a redirect from secondary contact to reinforcement. Maybe the lead could have the parenthetical removed and the bold use of the term secondary contact placed in the sentence about Dobzhansky's conception of the term? This might help remove the assumption of synonym? Andrew Z. Colvin • Talk 02:10, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I think secondary contact would be better redirected to hybrid zone instead of here, and eventually it should be given its own article. As one of the figures shown, reinforcement is only one of the four possible outcomes of secondary contact. If we have to mention it, perhaps something like "reinforcement may occur during secondary contact" in one of the opening sentences would work. Yel D&#39;ohan (talk) 02:27, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree, it should have an article of its own. We could remove the redirect entirely and let the link simply be red. And honestly, we probably don't need to mention it in the lead at all by the fact that it needs its own article. We can link the use of the term in the sentence about Dobzhansky's conception. Andrew Z. Colvin • Talk 03:02, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

post-zygotic isolation
it is somewhat confusing that the article uses first the term "reproductive isolation" and later refers to it as "post-zygotic isolation" without clarifying that they are one and same. to find this out requires further inquiry from the layperson. i personally find post-zygotic a somewhat cryptic expression and would rather see it only once in the article at the very first time when "reproductive isolation" is mentioned, as a remark in brackets informing that it is also called "post-zygotic isolation", and then never more. at least the circumstance that the "post-zygotic isolation" expression leads to a redirect and the respective article refers to it as "reproductive isolation" seems to suggest that the latter term is/should be/ preferred.89.134.199.32 (talk) 21:05, 9 March 2020 (UTC).