# Dominant group/Metagenome/Term test

The cultural, humanistic, technical or scientific term dominant group occurs in about 286 articles on several of the WMF projects. Few of the sentences containing "dominant group" on Wikipedia seem to be attributed (cited or referenced to a source). What would you do?
Below in the section "Dominant group on wikipedia" is a partial list of those usages pertaining to biology or the overall biological metagenome.
Some of these occurrences have a right or wrong answer, but many may be open to debate.
Read through each of the following learning guides, then take the term test.
Prepare to defend your answers and enjoy this learning resource!
Some of the answers are listed on the 'Discuss' page. Be bold.

## Original research

Some hints about original research can be found in original research inquiry or the Wikiversity resource on original research.
For evaluating the occurrences of "dominant group", here is the associated 'original research' question:
Are any of these uses of "dominant group" original research or original synthesis?

## Attributions

Hints about attribution can be found in attribution and copyright.
Should each sentence using "dominant group" have a reference or citation after it?
Are any of the uses of "dominant group" plagiarism?

## Copyright

Please keep in mind that the copyright policy on Wikipedia (or any of the WMF projects) is in line with WMF desires to distribute educational materials in the form of information over the world-wide web to countries and political regions that may have a much more restrictive copyright law than the USA where the WMF is located.
This is a learning resource for Wikiversity that you may enjoy with respect to publication in the US. Please refrain from making any actual changes to Wikipedia or other WMF projects unless and until you are sure these changes are in line with local project policy.
Hints about copyright can be found in "copyright".
As each sentence stands, is it a copyright violation?

## What to do

What would you do if you found each sentence (for each sentence) on Wikipedia, or any of the WMF projects?
Some hints can be found in this resource about attribution and copyright.
Should you put a notice on a notice board somewhere on the site to let others know what some author or editor did, or didn't do?

## Dominant group on wikipedia

When the words dominant and group are entered into the "Search" window on Wikipedia, some
* 17,284 entries (August 9, 2013),
* 19,435 entries (February 28, 2015),
* 41,453 entries (February 7, 2016, everything), 20,856 (content pages), and
* 44,202 entries (February 13, 2017, everything), 22,392 (content pages),
are returned. At the least entries contain some form of these two words often unconnected. Searching "dominant group" with the quotes returns
* 274 as of October 9, 2011,
* 319 as of August 9, 2013,
* 347 as of July 17, 2014,
* 272 as of February 28, 2015, and
* 736 as of February 7, 2016 (everything) and 279 (content pages),
* 788 as of February 13, 2017 (everything) and 310 (content pages),
with most but not all entries containing dominant group specifically. The uses of the term in this test are those in the context of biology (content pages). In the 2016 search, many more articles turned up because the search criteria were maximized.
Here is the list of the test questions.
* Are any of these uses of "dominant group" original research or original synthesis?
* Should each sentence using "dominant group" have a reference or citation after it?
* Are any of the uses of "dominant group" plagiarism?
* As each sentence stands, is it a copyright violation?
* What you would do if you found each sentence (for each sentence) on Wikipedia, or on Wikiversity, or any WMF project?
* Should you put a notice on a notice board somewhere on the site to let others know what some author or editor did, or didn't do?
* How would you edit the entry or the current page on the local project?
Separately, write what you believe about each of these with respect to
* original research or synthesis,
* attribution,
* copyright, and
* a step by step procedure of what to do if you (or anyone) finds anything similar on a WMF project.
For citation and examination, the current page containing the quoted usage of "dominant group" is either within the quote, before the quote, or indicated after the reference to the author who contributed "dominant group" to the page.
Some hints occur after several of these examples.
* "Before European settlement, galaxias were the dominant group of native freshwater fish in New Zealand, and, along with the Percichthyidae, one of two dominant groups of native fish freshwater in south-eastern Australia.": cannot find support for this use of "dominant group" on Google scholar.
* "Euenantiornithes is a superorder of Cretaceous birds. They are considered to contain the more advanced taxa of the Enantiornithes, the dominant group of birds during the late Mesozoic." "Enantiornithes is the dominant group of Mesozoic birds (Chiappe and Witmer, 2002; Hou et al., 2003)."
* "The course of evolution has been changed several times by mass extinctions that wiped out previously dominant groups and allowed other to rise from obscurity to become major components of ecosystems.", from Paleontology.
* "When dominance of particular ecological niches passes from one group of organisms to another, it is rarely because the new dominant group is "superior" to the old and usually because an extinction event eliminates the old dominant group and makes way for the new one.", from Paleontology. The statement is followed by [82][83].
* "When dominance of particular ecological niches passes from one group of organisms to another, it is rarely because the new dominant group is "superior" to the old and usually because an extinction event eliminates the old dominant group and makes way for the new one.[18][182]", from Evolutionary history of life.
* From Shaochilong, "Shaochilong is the youngest known Laurasian allosauroid suggesting that basal tetanurans not tyrannosaurids, were still the dominant group of large-bodied theropods in Laurasian during the Mid-Cretaceous and that the rise of tyrannosaurids as the dominant group of large terrestrial predators was sudden and confined to the very end of the Cretaceous.": cannot find reference for these uses of dominant group in this context using Google scholar, editor may have used "dominant group" as a synonym for largest group. Both references are to Wikipedia users who inserted text containing "dominant group".
* "When dominance of particular ecological niches passes from one group of organisms to another, it is rarely because the new dominant group is "superior" to the old and usually because an extinction event eliminates the old dominant group and makes way for the new one.[15][16]", from Extinction event.
* "The dominance hierarchy also comes into play, as the offspring of the more dominant group members get preferential treatment." from Chlorocebus.
* "Social Darwinism was a theory which applied Darwin's theory of Natural Selection to ethnic groups and social classes. It suggested that the success of these different ethnic groups in world affairs, and social classes in a society were the result of evolutionary forces, a struggle in which the group or class more fit to succeed did so; i.e., the ability of an ethnic group to dominate other ethnic groups, or the chance to succeed or rise to the top of society was determined by biology, not by the effort of individuals, and the offspring of the dominant groups were destined to succeed because they were more evolved. In more modern times it is typically seen as dubious and unscientific for its apparent use of Darwin's ideas to justify the position of the rich and powerful, or dominant ethnic groups." from The War of the Worlds.
* "The dominant groups today are the gymnosperms, which include the coniferous trees, and the angiosperms, which contain all fruiting and flowering trees."
* "The rise of dominant groups such as amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds occurred by opportunistic expansion into empty ecological niches and the extinction of groups happened due to large shifts in the abiotic environment."
* "A subclass of the Osteichthyes, the ray-finned fishes Actinopterygii, have become the dominant group of fishes in the post-Paleozoic and modern world, with some 30,000 living species." from prehistoric fish, redirected to evolution of fish. "[I]t was suggested that 'the actinopterygians (which is the dominant group of fish at the present time with more than 20 000 species) responded to selection pressures by selective enlargement of parts of the brain that enabled a species to occupy an adaptive niche with special success' (Jerison 1973)."
* "In the Cretaceous Period, sauropods in North America were no longer the dominant group of herbivorous dinosaurs, with the duck-billed dinosaurs, such as Edmontosaurus becoming the most abundant. However, on other landmasses such as South America and Africa (which were island continents much like modern Australia) sauropods, in particular the titanosaurs continued to be the dominant herbivores."
* "Their presence as the dominant group in the Western Cape led to this plant community being referred to as the Fynbos (Afrikaans , 'fine bush') community [1]", from Restionaceae. Usage of dominant group has been removed from the current entry.
* From Agricultural microbiology: "Bacteria:- more dominant group of microorganisms in the soil and equal to one half of the microbial biomass in soil."
* "Oxisols and Orthents are the dominant groups, though a few more fertile soils have been found, such as the extensive Andisols mentioned earlier from Jurassic Siberia."
* Per Evolution of reptiles: "The archosaurs became the dominant group during the Triassic period, developing into the well-known dinosaurs and pterosaurs, as well as crocodiles and phytosaurs."
* "Staghorn corals are the dominant group of reef builders.", from Acroporidae.
* "Perhaps the magpie-geese were one of the dominant groups of Paleogene waterfowl, only to become largely extinct later.", per Magpie Goose.
* "The colt more than lived up to the lofty expectations on the Rowley Mile by delivering one of the most dominant Group One performances in racing history."
* Per Reptile: "The archosaurs became the dominant group during the Triassic period, though it took 30 million years before their diversity was as great as the animals that lived in the Permian.[35]" See number 17 above.
* "The dominant group are the methanogens, particularly Methanobrevibacter smithii and Methanosphaera stadtmanae.[10]", per Human microbiome.
* From Lake Kivu: "Diatoms are the dominant group in the lake, particularly during the dry season episodes of deep mixing."
* "Nonetheless, lichen can certainly withstand harsher conditions than most vascular plants and although they have slower colonization rates, do form the dominant group in alpine regions.", from Pedosphere.
* "Perissodactyls were the dominant group of large terrestrial browsers right through the Oligocene."
* "Around the Paleogene-Neogene boundary (some 25 mya), barn-owls were the dominant group of owls in southern Europe and adjacent Asia at least; the distribution of fossil and present-day owl lineages indicates that their decline is contemporary with the evolution of the different major lineages of typical owls, which for the most part seems to have taken place in Eurasia.", per Owl.
* From Phylogeny of insects: "And today the neopterous insects (those that can fold their wings back over the abdomen) are by far the most dominant group of insects." The title redirects to Evolution of insects.
* "Polyglyphanodontians were the dominant group of lizards in North America and Asia during the Late Cretaceous." There are two citations, but is dominant group mentioned in either article?
* "A subclass of bony fishes, the ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii), have become the dominant group in the post-Paleozoic and modern world, with some 30,000 living species." No citations are included, also see number 12 above.
* "While they were the dominant group of land birds during the Cretaceous period, enantiornithes became extinct along with many other dinosaur groups at the end of the of the Mesozoic era." Who used dominant group first, the book author or the Wikipedia editors?
* "The first universally accepted echinoderms appear in the Lower Cambrian period, asterozoans appeared in the Ordovician and the crinoids were a dominant group in the Paleozoic."
* "Perissodactyls were the dominant group of large terrestrial browsers right through the Oligocene." No citation and see number 25 above.
* "One of the reef's most dominant groups"
* "In Laurentia the Fallotaspidoids were succeeded by Nevadioids, Judomioids and Olenelloids, the latter remaining the dominant group of trilobites until the extinction of all Olenellina at the very end of the Lower Cambrian, after which Redlichiina, Ptychopariida and Corynexochida took over."
* "All of these characters represented major improvements, so that the Neopterygii became the dominant group of fishes (and, thus, taxonomically of vertebrates in general), and they also include the vast majority of the modern fishes, the teleosts." Try editing the source.
* "The dominant group of snow algae is chlamydomonads, a type of green algae."
* "During the Cretaceous, the dominant group of living fishes, the teleosts, first achieved ascendency over their holostean forbears."
* "Tinamous form the dominant group of terrestrial birds in South America, where they largely replace the Galliformes ecologically, with no other bird family there having comparable diversity, distribution, or suite of habitat adaptations."
* "The scientists argued that the correlation between the group size and patch size is because of the indirect consequence of the positive relationship between the dominant group member’s length and the anemone size. The length of the dominant group member limits the group size because the length of the dominant group member prevents the group of the subordinate group members. This data shows that the patch size and group size correlation does not necessarily imply the decrease in resources of group members subordinate to the dominant group member.[14]"
* "Territoriality males were the most dominant group (which deserted the female after mating), but male reproductive behavior changes between different reproductive cycles."
* "In those regions annual Kali species are known as "solyanki"; they are important as drought- and salt-tolerant forage and form a dominant group in the flora and vegetation of the most challenging environments."
* "In Oligocene Africa, they were the dominant predatory group."

## Dominant group on wikisource

Here is a summary list of the test questions.
* Are any of these uses of "dominant group" original research or original synthesis?
* Should each sentence using "dominant group" have a reference or citation after it?
* Are any of the uses of "dominant group" plagiarism?
* As each sentence stands, is it a copyright violation?
* What you would do if you found each sentence (for each sentence) on Wikipedia, or on Wikiversity, or any WMF project?
* Should you put a notice on a notice board somewhere on the site to let others know what some author or editor did, or didn't do?
* How would you edit the entry or the current page on the local project?
Separately, write what you believe about each of these with respect to
* original research or synthesis,
* attribution,
* copyright, and
* a step by step procedure of what to do if you (or anyone) finds anything similar on a WMF project.
For citation and examination, the current page containing the quote usage of "dominant group" is either within the quote, before the quote, or indicated after, the reference to the author who contributed "dominant group" to the page is included.
* "In the polypetalous forms progression from hypogyny to epigyny is generally recognized, and where dorsiventrality with insect-pollination has been established, a dominant group has been developed as in the Leguminosae.", from 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Angiosperms.

## Hypotheses

* The meaning of dominant group in biology is exactly the same as defined by Darwin.