Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Evolutionary biology/ 3

need help with an article
I am working on an article on Elephant evolution.What I used as a primary reference was an old textbook. It lacked its cover so I do not know who the author or publisher is. Could someone please help me with the article. --EvilFlyingMonkey (talk) 11:46, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Intelligence Citations Bibliography for Articles Related to IQ Testing
I see some mention of evolutionary biological perspectives in some of the Wikipedia articles on human intelligence, and there are some articles in the scope of this WikiProject Evolutionary biology that seem to get into a lot of back-and-forth about IQ testing. You may find it helpful while reading or editing articles to look at a bibliography of Intelligence Citations, posted for the use of all Wikipedians who have occasion to edit articles on human intelligence and related issues. I happen to have circulating access to a huge academic research library at a university with an active research program in these issues (and to another library that is one of the ten largest public library systems in the United States) and have been researching these issues since 1989. You are welcome to use these citations for your own research. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources through comments on that page. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human intelligence to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 00:47, 6 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Your suggestions of new sources would be most appreciated. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:50, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Coevolution and aparallel evolution
Hello. I'm at work on a philosophy article in which the authors concerned cite a concept by the biologist Rémy Chauvin called "aparallel evolution". This is defined as an interaction involving "two beings that have absolutely nothing to do with each other" and one example discussed is the mimicry involved in pseudocopulation between certain orchids and wasps. Another is the horizontal gene transfer by a type C virus between the baboon and certain domestic cats. My question is: does the article on coevolution describe the same phenomemon? A related one? I read in the New Scientist earlier this year that "When symbiosis results in such evolutionary change [the example is hummingbirds and the structure of flowers] it is known as symbiogenesis" (#2745, p.33). Does this apply to these examples (only one or both)? The philosophical work from which this is taken is thirty years old, so I would like to make sure that the article will reflect the current vocabulary and understanding. Many thanks for any assistance you can provide. DionysosProteus (talk) 10:13, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

PAH world hypothesis
Would someone please look at PAH world hypothesis. I have left these five edits for now, but the language and citation style is clearly inappropriate. Johnuniq (talk) 02:10, 2 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree that "the language and citation style is clearly inappropriate". But a few other sentences have no citations, and therefore could be vulnerable to similar objections. If you could provide good citations for the other sentence, then you would be in justified these five edits. --Philcha (talk) 05:08, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not qualified to fix that new text added by the IP, so I'm rather hoping someone here will. Also, the ten external links added as "references" need a quick check: Do any support the new text? Surely not all ten are needed? Johnuniq (talk) 11:04, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Notice of ArbCom decision on Race and intelligence and related articles
The Arbitration Commmittee case on race and intelligence has just been decided. Thus articles that are either in the Race and intelligence controversy category or mentioned in the  findings of the 2010 Arbitration Committee  case on Race and intelligence or closely related to those are subject to  active arbitration remedies that you may wish to review. The case decision seems to have resulted in an immediate improvement in the editing environment of several articles that previously were very contentious. Peaceful, collaborative editing that turns to sources and upholds Wikipedia policy is enjoyable editing. I thought I should let participants on this WikiProject know that this improved atmosphere now exists, because some of the articles related to that case have long been marked as part of this project. Your participation in editing those articles is welcomed and encouraged. You can look up sources to help improve articles in the source lists I have been compiling to share with all Wikipedians. And because the source lists span several different topics, and those topics fit quite a few articles in this WikiProject in whole or in part, suggesting new sources would be a very kind thing to do. The atmosphere has improved a lot, so the articles can improve a lot. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:48, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Evolutionary biology articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release
Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Evolutionary biology articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (&diams;) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:00, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Apomorph, apomorphy and apomorphies: Redirects and definition need cleanup
The words apomorph, apomorphy, and apomorphies are mentioned in various articles.

Apomorph redirects to Cladistics.

Apomorphy and apomorphies redirect to Synapomorphy.

Cladistics defines apomorphy and synapomorphy as separate terms.

Synapomorphy seems to be saying that a synapomorphy is a type of apomorphy, but doesn't give a clear definition of apomorphy.

We're likely to get bright laypeople or students who would like to know what the terms apomorph, apomorphy and/or apomorphies mean. We should make all of these redirect to the same article and include a clear short definition of the term there.

-- 187.67.203.186 (talk) 02:41, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Homo floresiensis
I added Colin Groves' claim to have disproved the cretinism hypothesis to this article, giving a reference to his article in HOMO, cited in New Scientist (Colin Groves and Catharine Fitzgerald, 'Healthy Hobbits or victims of Sauron', HOMO - Journal of Human Comparative Biology, vol. 61 p. 211, cited in New Scientist, 26 June 2010, p. 17). An anonymous editor has added at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Homo_floresiensis&diff=prev&oldid=389644384 that "Unfortunately this article remains unpublished and the published abstract is insufficient to judge the merits or demerits of this work", and commented that "Your readers are misled by what is presented here".

However, the brief New Scientist article cites William Jungers as agreeing that the study puts the idea to rest, and the full text is available at ScienceDirect for $24.95. Is there an editor who has access to the article without paying $24.95 who can clarify whether it is just an abstract? Dudley Miles (talk) 18:14, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I do; it is in fact only an abstract (presumably from some conference). Ucucha 18:52, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your help.Dudley Miles (talk) 19:01, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Are Ediacaran fauna diploblasts?
I've asked at the talk page, but it seems rather quiet, so I'd thought I'd mention it here as well. --Michael C. Price talk 21:29, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Mims–Pianka controversy
Some more eyes would be good to have in both AfD and articles William A. Dembski, Mims–Pianka controversy, Forrest Mims. Couple of strongly sock-smelling fresh editors are making widespread deletions and changes in those. -- Sander Säde 13:10, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

AAAS and Wikipedian biologists
Fellow Wikipedians, I've recently been speaking with a (responsible) New York based journalist who is working on a story on the people and motivations behind the biological content on Wikipedia. She is attending the upcoming American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting and was wondering whether any Wikipedians were going. If you are, she would like to meet with you. Leave me a message or email me and I can put you in touch with her. Her request is as follows:


 * “I’m a journalist with The Scientist magazine and I’m writing an article about the creators of Wikipedia pages on basic biology. I’m planning on attending the AAAS meeting in Washington DC in February 17-21st, and am looking to meet up with Wikipedia writers and editors. I’d like to get a group together and get a better sense of the culture of contributors that write and polish these entries. Alternately, if you know of a different upcoming meeting of life science-Wiki-writers/editors on the east coast, let me know.”

Rockpock e  t  10:26, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Citation templates now support more identifiers
Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as citation, cite journal, cite web...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place id (or worse http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567), now you can simply use 0123.4567, likewise for id and http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789 &rarr; 0123456789.

The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):



Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:48, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Evolutionary psychology RFC
I have started an important RFC here regarding how to integrate the criticism of Evolutionary psychology into the article about that topic, and about how to define the topic itself either narrowly or broadly. Please participate.·Maunus· ƛ · 02:09, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Not sure about this article
I am having a discussion with the author of Dominant group (evolutionary biology). I'm not really an expert so I don't know if this is really a notable topic in biology. I don't want to nominate the article for deletion if it is. BigJim707 (talk) 02:35, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * There is actually a whole group of articles on the topic of Dominant group, all seem to be by the same author. BigJim707 (talk) 19:34, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

FAR notice
nominated Homo floresiensis for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Dana boomer (talk) 13:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Straw poll on fate of Evolutionary Biology article
Hi, this is to notify you that I have started a more indept discussion about whether the Evolutionary Biology article should be restored and in what form exactly. Please see Talk:Evolutionary_biology for the discussion. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 03:46, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Transitional fossil article improvement
I've done some edits to the Transitional fossil article today, but it still needs a lot of work. For whatever reason the article seems to have been neglected until now. I have added it to the Evolutionary Biology Wikiproject and given it top importance. With some work we can get it to FA status. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 01:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * "Top" might be too high. "High" might be a better rating. Feel free to change if you think it should be. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 15:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Talk page needs archiving
There's messages from years and years ago on here. Several archives need to be created. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 01:41, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Transitional Fossil peer-review

 * Peer_review/Transitional_fossil/archive1
 * Transitional fossil

It is a very important subject, and I wish to take it to GA/FA status in the future. A large section of the article discusses Archaeopteryx and the origin of birds. Input from members of this wikiproject would be highly valued. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 00:27, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to merge Evolutionary Biology and Palentology templates:
I have left a message on the Evolutionary Biology template talk page about expanding it to include more Paleontology topics. Please go here to discuss. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 00:22, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

New editor, new article
Picked it up on new page patrol: Hologenome theory of evolution. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 14:51, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Paleogenetics article in need of attention
Hi all,

I came across the article Paleogenetics and found it in pretty sorry shape—short, substandard writing quality, lack of strong and up-to-date sources. I've made some preliminary minor copyedits and removed some particularly bad bits, but the article is still rather shoddy. I have some knowledge of the anthropological aspect of it and would be happy to help out with that bit, but I am busy with other things at the moment and cannot guarantee much in-depth support for the next month or so. I was hoping that I'd find some editors around here who would be able to help improve this neglected article, which deals with a field that is quickly growing in prominence, especially with recent work on the Neandertal and Denisovan genomes by Svante Pääbo and others. Thanks, Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 06:33, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Fossil peer review
I have sent the article on Fossils for peer review. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 15:47, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Peer_review/Fossil/archive1

Assistance with Natural genetic engineering
I found an abandoned stub of Natural genetic engineering and have taken it about as far as I can. I think the bibliography is in pretty decent shape, but at this point a biologist needs to be summarizing the work rather that me continuing to guess. I have pdfs of most of the references I've dug up and I'm happy to email copies to anyone who would like to assist. As this board looks pretty moribund I'll probably crosspost this to a few evolution articles. Garamond Lethe 00:54, 1 October 2012 (UTC)