User:MichKayla S/Alligator/Natedavino Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

I'm reviewing MichKayla S's draft of revisions to the alligator page.


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * User:MichKayla S/Alligator
 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Alligator
 * Alligator

Evaluate the drafted changes
Overall:

This is a good draft. The content is great, you include several important physiological processes to alligator life that are also fairly unique to alligators. For the most part the tone/word choice is good, although sometimes the writing feels a little more fluffy/could be more to the point. To be honest I don't have many criticisms or specific edit suggestions, you did a good job :)

Content:

Very good. Your descriptions are detailed without being too technical for the average reader to understand. I do think you could benefit from occasionally linking to other Wikipedia articles so that non-biologist readers can easily find a term they don't know (ex. 'shunt/ing' 'mucosa', 'basal metabolic rate'). I see you already did that with gastroliths and brumation, that's great stuff.

Tone/Balance:

My only issue here is slight occasional wordiness (which is really not bad at all, just here and there). For example, in sentences/sections like this:

"This is due to the increase in CO2 concentration of the blood. This increased concentration of CO2 results from the right to left shunting of the alligators heart. The right to left shunt of the heart in alligators means the circulatory system will recirculate blood through the body instead of back to the lungs."

you could do without repeating the end of the last sentence at the beginning of the next sentence. It could be something like this:

"This is due to the increase in CO2 concentration of the blood, a result of the right to left shunting of the alligators heart."

which cuts down a bit on sentence length and repetition.

Sources/References:

They all seem good to me. I see some instances where two or three sentences are from the same source, which is listed after the last sentence. Personally I think it's better to cite after each sentence to avoid confusion, but that's just my preference, you can keep it the way it is if you want.

Organization:

Pretty good throughout. For a little bit I thought that you could split the first section up because there's a bit of an abrupt transition from talking about digestion to circulation back to digestion. However, I think that if you change up the wording and are a little more concise with the circulation piece that won't be a problem.