User:Humblebear1/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Behavioral ecology

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate this article because behavioral ecology is my favorite subdiscipline of biology, and I have been involved in related research for the past couple of years. Behavioral ecology is very important to other biological disciplines such as evolutionary biology and conservation biology. My first impressions were that the article was overall good and informative, and provides the reader with lots of helpful examples to help visualize the patterns observed through past experiments and observations.

Evaluate the article
The lead section is informative and gives the reader a good idea of what behavioral ecology is, however I would have liked to see more about what constitutes a behavior, and how natural selection can act on a behavior. An extra example of how behaviors can evolve or benefit individuals would have made the intro a little more enticing.

The article has a lot of solid content with lots of great examples that illustrate the topic being discussed, from a variety of systems, and as far as I know most information is up to date. This article covers most major topics within behavioral ecology, however there are some sections that are lacking some information; for example, the Red Queen hypothesis is never mentioned, the predator-prey relationships and the behaviors evolved by each aren't thoroughly mentioned, and optimal foraging theory is left out as well. In the mate choice by resources section, it would benefit from adding that there are many exceptions to the standard of male promiscuity and female choosiness, and that costs from all levels of reproduction govern sexual selection dynamics. In the mate choice by genes section, the example with T. moori should add that the pattern of mating with individuals of the same phenotype is called assortative mating. Lastly, in the mating systems section, birds seem to be overrepresented among study systems.

From what I could tell, this article is neutral, and the information provided seems to be agreed upon within the scientific community. All theories presented are presented in a neutral way, with the author most often giving the definition of the theory and later stating if any known exceptions to the theory exists.

The article is well-referenced and contains a little over 130 resources. There were a few places in the article that had missing citations, but for the most part all of the information is backed up with a reference. However, the article could benefit from having more recent references, as most are from the late 20th century to very early 21st century.

The writing of the article is easy to interpret and understand, and the layperson should be able to follow along reasonably well with the writing in this article, as it doesn't get too caught up with scientific jargon or come off as intentionally complicated. It is well-organized into sections and transitions fine from topic to topic. Most of the images included display animals being discussed rather than performing behaviors, but I think they are sufficient at adding something visually appealing and keeping the reader interested.

Overall, this article provides the reader with a good overview of the study of behavioral ecology, citing many of the main topics and theories that behavioral ecologists specialize in. This article could benefit from updating some of its references and adding in a couple of important pieces of information. Otherwise, it is well written and informative to the scientist and the layperson alike.