User:Beccyw/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Maternal behavior in vertebrates

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I am choosing to evaluate this article because I think it is an interesting topic that should have a more detailed Wikipedia page, especially considering how important this behaviour is to ensuring the survival of so many species.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

This article contains a lot of interesting information, though it does have some problems with the lead section as well as what content is and is not being included in the article.

There are a few problems with the leading section that I found. The introductory sentence of this article describes parental care in general, which is already a separate Wikipedia article. I think it would be better if the introductory sentence mentioned that maternal behaviour is a type of parental care but go more into maternal behaviour in specific. The lead section overall is very long and includes a lot of information not relevant to the article such as other types of parental care (biparental, paternal). I think mentioning these are fine as a way to compare with maternal behaviour but overall do not need to be described so much in the introduction. The lead section also only provides a brief explanation of the mammal portion of the rest of the article and should add mention of the fact that there is also information about birds and reptiles in the article.

This article is written in a neutral tone, though the amount of information given on mammals outweighs that of other vertebrate groups greatly. As mentioned in the article mammals do generally perform more maternal care than the other groups I still think they are far too lacking in comparison. There is also no section on the maternal behaviour of fish, which I feel could have its own section the same as mammals, reptiles, and birds.

All sections of the article are lacking in specific details and examples. For example I believe adding the unique maternal behaviours of monotremes to the mammal section would be a useful addition. I also think the brood parasite section should elaborate more on how exactly the host birds' behaviour is affected rather than just saying that it can have an effect. The article also does not contain any photos, which I believe should be added to improve understanding of the content and engage readers.

In terms of sources and references all of the links do work and the sources used are legitimate, up to date, and contain a lot of useful information. However, the entire article only has 8 references, with the bulk of the citations coming from just two sources. More diverse research could overall improve the article.

There has been no discussion on the talk page of this article. This article is part of three WikiProjects; Animals, Evolutionary biology, and Ecology. I think overall this article speaks less in depth than topics we have covered in class.

While this article is definitely underdeveloped, though it does have some strengths. The section on neurobiological influences on maternal behavior is very interesting and a great addition to the article, though it could definitely be added to to be more detailed. The article is also well-organized and has little to no spelling or grammatical errors.