User:Cat&Donkey/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

Guppy

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.)

This is the article recommended by Dr. KFF, specifically the mating and reproduction sections, presumably because of their relevance to evolution.

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.)

Overall this article seems relatively well developed with a generally appropriate outline. However, the writing style can be hard to read at times and phrasing could be more concise. Additionally, there are parts that have some jargon that would be unfriendly to a lay-person or seem like they may be close-paraphrasing results from a paper. The mating section dives right into specific details of the mating system while overlooking important background information that would be helpful to readers. For instance, the section would benefit from explaining if breeding is seasonal, if there are any courtship rituals or direct competition between males etc. Sometimes this article references ideas but doesn't fully explain or introduce them. For instance, the inbreeding avoidance section states that there are numerous pre-copulatory avoidance mechanisms but doesn't list or explain what they are. Similarly, the discussion of orange spots in male guppies could be reorganized for coherence. I found the reproduction section easy to follow, however a lot of the reproduction information would be helpful to know before reading the mating section. Perhaps it would have served the article better to make reproduction the broader heading underneath ecology and behavior and make mating behavior section as a subsection within it.

These sections seemed to be well cited, primarily referencing peer reviewed articles, however, most seem to be relatively old so It would good to incorporate any significant new findings from the last few years. The content also seems unbiased (although I'm not sure what biases you can have related to guppy reproduction) and effectively used links to other articles so it was easy to find more information. Finally, the pictures and videos were effective aids although more impactful images could probably be found for the mating section.