User:TanishaT/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of Article: Cooperative breeding
 * I choose to evaluate this article because cooperative breeding is a significant evolutionary development within the animal kingdom and is an essential framework for conceptualizing social systems, reproductive strategies, and life history patterns of many species.

Lead


The Lead sufficiently and concisely introduces the article's topic, and effectively summarizes the information subsequently provided throughout the subheadings. However, some key guiding terms, such as kin selection, as well as key figures that contributed to advancing knowledge in this topic are omitted.

Content
All content included to int he article is relevant and essential towards understanding the topic of cooperative breeding. However, there are significant limitations in information provided in the biological examples category, as some subcategories have extensive elaboration while other simply name a few species where cooperative breeding is observed without explaining the contextual evidence. Furthermore, there is a complete exclusion of humans within the biological examples category despite cooperative breeding being an heavily-cited phenomena in evolutionary history.

Tone and Balance


The tone of the article is neutral and uses terminology that is generally uncontested in the general population. The tone is not leading in any way, instead providing an objective presentation of information.

Sources and References


The facts and theories provided in the article is adequately cited with relevant, trustworthy, and contemporary references within the immediate fields of biology, ecology, and evolution.

Organization


The overall organization of the article is skillfully constructed as it provides begins by providing background information on the evolutionary process that drove the emergence of cooperative breeding, analyzed the costs and benefits to both the "helper" and "breeders", and included a few examples to contextualize the topic. The article is very concise, but at can be difficult to read at some points due to run-on sentences. It may be beneficial to form multiple, smaller sentences as the information can be very dense, especially to someone unfamiliar with this field.

Images and Media


There is lack of media and images found in the article, with only a singular photograph at the end. Additionally, the caption on the image does not specify the particular species shown or label the concept that is being emphasized in relation to the topic of cooperative breeding.

Checking the talk page


The talk page illuminates some concerns mentioned above regarding the lack of elaboration on some biological examples, specifically primates and humans. Additionally, some propose the combination of this article with others of the similar vain, namely alloparenting which is only used as an explanatory tool within this paper. This article is heavily focused on the male/female sex, with repeated use of the term "sex" and references to traditional dichotomous view of reproductive, which differs from our class discussions about sexual plasticity and sexual diversity throughout the animal kingdom.

Overall impressions


Overall, this article provides the sufficient general knowledge to begin thinking about the topic of cooperative breeding and how it functions in the evolutionary perspective. The largest area of improvement for this article is elaboration on biological examples and the inclusion of humans and other primates as prime examples. Therefore, I would assess this article in its current state as underdeveloped.