Talk:Western banded gecko

As Pets - should this section be included?
I'd like to thank everyone who contributes to this article, and am not necessarily looking to rollback any edits. I would like to pose a question: Does it make sense to have a section merely stating that people keep these geckos as pets? The assertion that they are "very popular" as pets would seem to me to be incorrect, and they are illegal to sell as pets in much of their native range (CA bans them for sale for sure, I think AZ and other states might as well but I am not sure offhand and would need to look that up). Are they popular in other parts of the US or overseas perhaps? I marked that assertion as citation needed, I will delete it if no citations are added and I can't find any supporting evidence.

In either case, many if not most reptile species are kept as pets on occasion. The same could be true of essentially any animal. I don't know that it makes a lot of sense to mention it is kept as a pet on occasion if that fact doesn't have much relevance to the species or society. Leopard geckos for example are one of the most popular pet reptiles, are often used as laboratory models, and are essentially domesticated, so it makes a lot of sense to mention their popularity in captivity. For an animal that is occasionally kept in captivity, having a section that states "these animals are kept as pets" doesn't really add much in my opinion. On other articles I have seen (leopard gecko, african fat tailed gecko, etc) it also seems to encourage info dumps of how-to husbandry information, which are generally not appropriate for Wikipedia.

I could be persuaded otherwise - does anyone feel strongly that the "as pets" information should remain included? Connorlong90 (talk) 02:20, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

As there was no response and the section remained uncited I deleted it over concerns of relevance and the accuracy of the claims itself. Connorlong90 (talk) 21:19, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Phylogeny
I have a lot of respect for geneticists, taxonomists, and everyone interested in the phylogenies of wildlife species. I thank everyone working on this article and hope we can work together to help educate the public about this interesting species. At this time I have deleted the phylogeny section, due to being a summary of a single article which was written in a way that I do not believe an educated layperson could understand, and because we also have a subspecies section to discuss the taxonomy. The deleted section read:


 * "A study investigating the deep phylogeographic structure within C. variegatus using mtDNA analyses recovered six divergent clades throughout the species' range, with topology of the mtDNA gene tree suggesting separate origins of peninsular populations with an older lineage in the south and younger one in the north. The same study found that analyses of multilocus nuclear data provides support for four lineages, corresponding to subspecies C. v. abbotti, C. v. peninsularis, C. v. sonoriensis, and C. v. variegatus, with phylogenetic analyses indicating a single origin of the peninsular populations. This discordance is largely due to repeated episodes of mtDNA introgression that have obscured both lineage boundaries and biogeographic history. Combining the nuclear and mtDNA and applying dating analyses suggests that the peninsular clade diverged from the continental group in the Late Miocene."

The reason I feel this is appropriate for deletion is because it is essentially a summary of a single study, focuses on molecular mechanisms that are not particularly relevant to this article, and does not clearly state what the relevance is to this article. It's also written referencing genetic methods that are not immediately clear to me even with a STEM background (please see: wikipedia is not a journal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_manual,_guidebook,_textbook,_or_scientific_journal) which probably means that it is written at a level where an educated layperson trying to learn about geckos would be confused as to the relevance of the section or what exactly it is describing. If other editors feel strongly this information should be included, I would recommend a sentence or two summarizing the findings - not mentioning jargon-y genetic methods - included in the subspecies section.

Connorlong90 (talk) 21:30, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: California Natural History
— Assignment last updated by Sbriggs12 (talk) 18:05, 4 October 2022 (UTC)