User talk:Kimwayne/sandbox

Phototroph
The article contains reliable references; however, it may benefit from adding a couple more references to the background information. References to things like how phototrophs anabolically convert carbon dioxide into organic carbon and how there can be many different types of phototrophs (autotrophs, heterotrophs, lithotrophs) can help build additional reliability and notability. The article and references seem to be neutral. The references are appropriate as most of them are primary sources. All available hyperlinks of citations bring you to the correct source. The article seems to focus more on photoautotrophs than on heteroautotrophs. This may be because heteroautotrophs has its own Wikipedia page, whereas photoautotrophs seem to lack one. The article could be made more consistent if they kept the phototroph page to contain more general information about phototrophs and less information about the specific types of phototrophs. Information about the specific types of phototrophs could be shortened to a summary as well as a couple paragraphs explaining the difference between them. They can then be supplemented by their own Wikipedia pages (these would explain in more detail the specific types of phototrophs) for those who want a deeper understanding of the phototrophs. --Kimwayne (talk) 04:28, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Heterotroph
The heterotroph Wikipedia page currently has 11 references. Most of the sources that are referenced seem to be books relating to heterotrophs, what/how they harvest and use their energy, and information on specific heterotrophic organisms. Although the article doesn’t have many references, every reference does address the topic of heterotrophy. The contents of the article include: types, flowchart, and ecology. I will be focusing on the types of heterotrophs. Compared to the contents in the ecology section, the types of heterotrophs is more open to improvements and additions. The flowchart section contains hyperlinks to different nutritional groups. Little improvements can be made to this section as it is just a list directing to the different nutritional groups. One of the edits I plan on making includes the definitions of phototrophs, chemotrophs, organotrophs, and lithotrophs. I think that defining the different types of energy sources and electron donors can help with understanding how the different types of heterotrophs are capable of metabolism and how they differentiate from each other. The section currently only provides an example of photoorganoheterotrophs. I plan on adding examples for the other possible types of heterotrophs as well as adding additional information to the already existing examples. In these examples, I will add what kind of possible energy sources and electron donors/acceptors each heterotroph is capable of utilizing. --Kimwayne (talk) 03:29, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Peer Review
Your edits to the section "types" in heterotrophy greatly improved on the readability of the article. Specifically changing the wording from energy source to electron source and rewording the opening sentence made it much clearer what organotrophy and lithotrophy are and what exactly they are deriving from the organic and inorganic sources. This ties in well with the improved clarity about what lithotrophs are, and the improved balance between information regarding lithorophs and organotrophs in the first paragraph. The three-paragraph format was also a better way to organize the information. In addition, your edits maintained a good neutral and passive tone, while maintaining a coherent flow. However, there are some small improvements that could still be made to this section. Firstly, there could be more depth about the different modes of heterotrophy. For example, perhaps discussing facultative versus obligate chemolithotrophs and photorganotrophs which could lead to a discussion of the different relationships in mixotrophy between heterotrophy and autotrophy. This would help create a more evenly balanced section, rather than the current focus on photoorganotrophy. Secondly, while all the added sources were reputable, in some cases it is hard to see what information was added from them or it appears to be redundant or incorrect. Specifically, source 3 only appears to be added to say that Oceanithermus profundus is a chemolithoheterotroph (which is somewhat incorrect as it is a facultative lithotroph capable of organotrophy) and more could be taken from this source to improve the discussion on chemolithoheterotrophs. Also, source 6, from my understanding, is only to differentiate that use of organic carbon or CO2 for a carbon source comprise heterotrophy and autotrophy respectively and this seems somewhat redundant as heterotrophy is defined earlier, and autotrophy isn’t the current focus. Elaborating on these sources could help it balancing the section. Brendil Sabatino (talk) 01:52, 7 November 2017 (UTC)