User talk:Jlwatts98/Environmental sex determination

This article is very well written and also well organized. It was very easy to follow and I feel that you provided a ton of useful information from relevant sources. You also did a great job in linking articles to words/phrases that may need further clarification to those who may not know what those are. So great job! One of the things I wanted to comment is in regards to the “Taxonomic Range” section. You have a lot of information about vertebrates, ferns, mosses, and angiosperms. However, there is little information about annelids and crustaceans. Since there is only one sentence about annelids, would it be worth including it at all? I have the same thought about the first sentence in the Vertebrates section (“The sex of alligators is determined by nest temperature”). Both are very interesting facts but they seem like just filler sections. I also think it might be useful to mention in the introduction how both plants and animals experience environmental sex determintaiton, since you talk about both in the “Taxonomic Range”. While you do link information with “genotypic sex determination” and “sequential hermaphroditistm”, I think it might be useful even just to add something as simple as “Both plants and animals experience ESD” (or something along those lines) may help the reader understand the scope of the topic. Overall, awesome job with the article! Esf55 (talk) 15:46, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Esf55: Thank you so much for the edits. I will definitely keep these in mind as I move forward with the article. In terms of the annelids and vertebrates sections lacking in full detail, I agree with you on this, however, this being a plant class, I figured I would not edit those sections as they were written by someone else. I will definitely add your suggested sentence about both plants and animals experiencing ESD to the beginning of the article to make it more clear.Jlwatts98 (talk) 22:26, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Kylie's Peer Review Copied to Talk Page: Overall, you've added a ton to this article and did a great job introducing a variety of sources that support your claims. The information you present is clear and well organized, and the sections you added are pertinent to the article. You added great examples in the ferns, moss, and angiosperms sections of "Taxonomic range". You also did a really good job linking out to other relevant Wikipedia articles.

There are some areas that I think would benefit from a little more explanation as the average person might not understand these terms and concepts including heterogeneous environment in "Adaptive significance", epigenetic changes in "Mechanisms", why inducing maleness increases the probability of outcrossing in "Ferns", monoicous and dioicous in "Moss", epiphyte in "Angiosperms", and why angiosperms in high light are often female vs male. Also, a sentence in your "Mechanisms" section indicates that environmental cues trigger maleness or femaleness; it might be really helpful to expand on this a little and explain why certain cues trigger one sex over another.

Regarding citations, you did a great job adding many relevant citations to this article. It looks like some of the citations might have been autogenerated and thus need help adjusting the date category which currently may have something else attached to it. I also noticed that a sentence from the "Fern" section might benefit from adding a citation: "In many fern species, including Ceratopteris richardii, environmental sex determination is linked to breeding systems."

There are a couple spots that might benefit from a little more clarification. In the introduction, you indicate that under true ESD sex cannot be changed after it is determined; can you cite something for this or explain why changing sex isn't true ESD? Also, the first sentence under the "Vertebrates" section seems out of place and might fit better in the middle of the paragraph under it. In the "Adaptive significance" section, you say that ESD is most important in sessile organisms, would it make sense to specifically refer to plants as these sessile organisms here?

I don't see your graphic, but the pictures you've added to this page are great and definitely helpful.

All in all, I think this is going to be a great article. All of my suggestions are small things that you can decide if you agree with, and I really think you've done a great job and put a lot of work into improving this article!Jlwatts98 (talk) 22:18, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you so much for all of your valuable input to my article, I will definitely add these suggestions as I edit the final draft for upload to Wikipedia. And overall, I think you're right in saying that I have maybe assumed too much of the reader to understand these concepts, I will add little definitions in where you suggest. Also, I will add a citation where you suggested it after Ceratopteris richardii.

I will also give attention to your final tips on how to elaborate or clean up some sections. Thank you again for this valuable input.Jlwatts98 (talk) 22:26, 2 December 2020 (UTC)