# Talk:Lek mating

Needs explanation of Lekking in humans. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.213.92.196 (talk • contribs) .

Havn't heard of any notable sociological theory comparing human mating to 'lekking'... [Desmond Morse] is a zoologist who compares human mating to various other animals, not sure how helpful that would be. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.29.1.188 (talk • contribs) .
I'll attach one per request. --Sadi Carnot 08:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

This page needs a good bird lekking image, showing density distributions decreasing radially outward.  Anyone seen one some where.  If so show me and I'll make an image. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 17:27, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't wait, so I made one based on data from about 5-8 sources. --Sadi Carnot 06:11, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I consulted this page in connection with other matters and stayed to do some minor editing. Then I noticed the claim that "A lek when females come together to compete for males is called a mung (as in the yellow spotted millipede)". Revision as of 2008-07-25T21:27:22  by 86.26.101.142
This was news to me, but so are most other biological facts, so I simply tried to find a citation for that term (going on for six years after the vandalism, but better late than never). The only citation I could find (apart from many copies by now, mainly in rubberstamp sites that retail Wikipedia material) was in a book from 2010 with the following address: 
It seems to be a popular book and for all I know might have many merits, but it also seems to have lifted that material straight from the Wikipedia article (without attribution of course). It mentions the claim as an item of trivia. 
I then became suspicious of the claim concerning the yellow spotted millipede; I certainly have encountered large aggregations of millipedes mating, but I cannot remember having seen anything that seriously resembled female lekking. So I initiated some searches. I would be grateful to hear some serious and reliably cited material on the subject, but so far none of my own searches have yielded anything material. The female lekking behaviour of the yellow spotted millipede is occasionally mentioned in passing, but without citation or discussion, let alone first-hand description.
Now, our position in Wikipedia involves many disturbing responsibilities. There is hardly a statement in Wikipedia that one cannot find mindlessly retailed in articles and sites that appear in search engine retrievals. It is accordingly very important to be alert for vandalism in our articles. Vandalism is harmful in multiple ways; it harms the image of Wikipedia, wastes time that could be better spent on more constructive activities, reduces the confidence with which one may consult reference material, and disseminates actual misinformation, most usually among technically innocent readers, but also among professionals who do not have the time to check on every detail. The silly little fart who perpetrated this particular nonsense betraying his own creation by using an abusive term that raised suspicions, and an implausible biological subject that did nothing to allay them. Note however that by now that particular rumour has gone public and I am uncertain what if anything to do about it; is anyone in a position to propose its elimination from that book, which someone else might cite in innocence?
I would be grateful if anyone with material information on the mating habits of the yellow spotted millipede could inform us here or at that article. Unless someone has better ideas, I am inclined to add a note to the yellow spotted millipede article denying its lekking behaviour, but I think I shall delay that pending any alternative suggestions. 
I also would be grateful for material examples, properly supported, preferably including citations, of female lekking in any species whatsoever. The concept is important, but to include it in the article we need sound information and sound verification. 
JonRichfield (talk) 09:02, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Dear JonRichfield: Thank you for noticing the retailing of Wikipedia article's information. Also, thank you for fighting vandalism. Sorry I cannot help with the book. Geraldshields11 (talk) 22:33, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
I have used a very powerful university search engine (Web of Science) to search for papers related to "mung", "millipede", "lek", yellow spotted millipede" or "Harpaphe haydeniana".  There were no papers using the word "mung" in relation to this behaviour or animals, and no papers on female lekking in millipedes. Hope this helps.__DrChrissy (talk) 18:37, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
@DrChrissy and Geraldshields11. Much thanks to both. I am happy to note that there has been no repetition of the vandalism in this case. I just wonder how many undetected cases remain elsewhere.  ;-(  JonRichfield (talk) 19:11, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I tried to edit your page with my article and saw that it was immediately reverted. My intentions are good, and I updated a lot of facts that you were presenting with more modern sources. I am new to wikipedia, so I was trying to figure out how to edit and put in sources, no vandalism was intended.   I would appreciate that you look at my contribution as it is a substantial addition.  Thank you.  Allergicapples (talk) 17:39, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, I'm sorry you immediately ran into ClueBot. It isn't my page, or anyone else's, though some of us have put in a bit of work to reduce the chaos. I'd suggest that you make small changes, starting with fixing some broken sentences or the like, and moving up to adding the occasional sentence complete with its source, until you feel confident you know how to 'drive the car'.
Adding the whole contents of a paper (if that's what you mean by "my article") is unwise and may be forbidden if it's copyrighted anywhere: at the least, it is unlikely to be in Wikipedia style. You may find that the advice to academics on User:Kingofaces43's home page is useful - there are definite differences between editing here and writing a paper (for good reason on both sides), and it may save you quite a bit of trouble. I'll do what I can to help. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:57, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Thank you.  I appreciate your help on this matter.  Originally, I had the idea of creating a new article, I did contact John Richfield,as I saw him in the talk as someone who told me that creating a new article could be considered content forking, and I agree with him on that.  However, I would have no qualms about doing a separate page, though.  And I know that I was uploading "my article" but a lot of the text was taken from yours and just reformatted and referenced.  I did not plagarize from different pages.192.160.130.25 (talk) 19:39, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
OK, I'm sure you are well-intentioned and no plagiarism is involved. I suggest you proceed in small steps for now. If later on you see the need for a larger step then probably best to discuss it here: we can always put out a call for people to come and take a look at it. BTW please remember to sign your talk page postings with four tildes, i.e. "~~~~". Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:45, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, but I want to make a larger step.  I have a researched article that i've been working on (with much newer sources) that is formatted differently from the current version, and would like to put it in an area it can be where it can be reviewed. Here's what my revision entails : first, it creates separate headings for the different solutions of the lek paradox.  Next it separates condition dependence into two separate theories (allocation of resources/ negative pleiotropy) and availability of resources, along with experimental evidence of each involving stalk eyed flies and lesser waxmoths.  I have then added the heterozygosity theory which states that females may choose males that are outbred from them along with examples from female fur seals, and song birds.  I also gave examples to the MH1 allele frequency theory with pheasants and lizards. And then the theory of that there is no lek paradox, i have paired your buff breasted bird example from 1996 from one in 2001 with topi antelopes and spacial queing.  If so desired, i can post the article here on the talk page if that is the best venue for review.  I know what I'm talking about when it comes to this subject, but not on wikipedia.  192.160.130.25 (talk) 20:37, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, I've looked again at your edit, and while I'm sure it contained up-to-date science, it also did quite a lot of damage to the structure of the article. Let's look at the "wikitext" (behind the scenes, but in control of what appears on the screen) of the first paragraph you modified.

It's not really ok to take an existing Wikipedia text complete with all its special markup (a "Wikitext") and to flatten it out to plain ASCII type, leaving other editors to try to put it all back together. So, links to other articles include their names in double square brackets, and any such links are sacrosanct unless you know they're wrong!
Next, we need to consider how to get your citations into a form that will work on Wikipedia. Here's one as wikitext again:

<ref>{{cite journal | last1=Kirkpatrick | first1=M. | last2=Ryan | first2=M. | year=1991 | title=The evolution of mating preferences and the paradox of the lek | url=| journal=Nature | volume=350 | issue=| pages=33–38 | doi=10.1038/350033a0}}</ref>
This produces a little blue [1] in the text, and in the References section far below:

Kirkpatrick, M.; Ryan, M. (1991). "The evolution of mating preferences and the paradox of the lek". Nature. 350: 33–38. doi:10.1038/350033a0.
The academic citation is formatted automatically by the template (the thing in {{...}} brackets) to create a passable imitation of a typeset citation in a printed paper, as well as creating a little blue number which we place immediately after the full stop (yes, weird, I know), which when clicked on takes the reader down to the References section with the citation details.
I just spent a while wondering whether to try to run after you trying to format your work, but honestly I'd really prefer you to learn to do it yourself, so then you can update as many articles as you like. I'm very happy to help you learn. Hope you can see what's going on here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:03, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
I understand what you are saying, so here's what I've decided to do.  I will take my revision, and reformat it on my talk page so that I can see if everything's properly referenced and such.  I will then post the revision in it's entirety on this talk page on Monday.  Thank you.  Allergicapples (talk) 21:27, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Hey, I've finished working on the revision, though I'm still having some trouble with one of my references in formatting. I'd like for someone to take a look at it on my sandbox pageAllergicapples (talk) 04:17, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Good work. I've made a sequence of small changes (a), (b), (c) ... (h) which you can look through in the article's History to see what to do. I've fixed the first instance(s): obviously there are usually more to be done in the rest of the article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:02, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
By the way, you are right that this is an article. The existing text is at Lek paradox; it can be updated as soon as changes (a) ... (h) are done. I will leave a link from Lek mating to Lek paradox, with a very brief summary paragraph there. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:21, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Lek mating/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: The Most Comfortable Chair (talk · contribs) 12:34, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
Hello. I will be reviewing this. Thank you. — The Most Comfortable Chair 12:34, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks for taking this on. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:42, 2 October 2020 (UTC)


### Lead
"Leks are commonly formed before or during the breeding season." — This bit should be mentioned in the prose, perhaps as a brief note in "Lekking behaviour".
Actually, the statement adds nothing, so I've removed it and linked 'breeding season' elsewhere in the lead.
"and the conferring of indirect benefits to males" — females are also benefited by reducing costs, as explained in "Costs and benefits", and it should be mentioned here.
Done.


### Taxonomic range
"The presence of a group name means that some species in that group lek; groups with no lekking members are not shown." — "some" should not be in boldface as it puts undue emphasis on the word. Per MOS:NOBOLD, you can use italics with <em>...</em> instead: some.
Done.


### Lekking behaviour
Link — "great snipe" as it is the first mention, and "manakins".
Done.
Can it be mentioned why certain males do not return to their mating sites? If there are any notable reasons apart from what we can commonly assume (getting killed, predators in the territory, etc.)?
You are surely right that males can fail to return for any number of reasons, but not sure we can without WP:OR say anything more than "successful".
"Some species of ant" — Would "Some species of ants" be better, consistent with the previous "In some species of manakins"?
Removed the "s" from manakins.
"and wait 6–7 weeks for a female to approach." — This got me curious. Would we have data on longest lasting lekking behaviours? And perhaps on the shortest? Either way, I believe that it will be worthwhile to give some idea about how long lekking can last. For instance, I was also left wondering how long would those avian males lek for after reading the second paragraph.
To be honest, I doubt that that would be helpful: these things are seasonal (i.e. within a part of a year), but there is a massive difference between lekking flies and lekking elephant seals.


### Costs and benefits
Unlink — "great snipe" as it should be linked previously.
Done.
"When under predatory pressure, female marbled reed frogs have been seen consistently to choose leks near their release sites" — Could be tweaked a bit? Perhaps something like → "When under predatory pressure, female marbled reed frogs have consistently chosen leks near their release sites"
Thanks, tweaked.


### Female mating preferences
This is a short section and basically detailing research on female behaviour associated with lekking. — I would suggest shifting it and making it a sub-section of "Lekking behaviour". As of now, the article describes lekking behaviour (of males), then mentions various costs and benefits to both males and females, and then describes female behaviour associated with the process of lekking.
OK, moved.


### The lek paradox
Unlink — "in lekking species constitutes a paradox" as it is already linked with the "main article" template.
Done.
Link — "fecundity"
Done.
"M. Zuk" — Since there is no article on the person, their full name should be used.
Done.


### Evolution
"This prediction is difficult to test, but there was a negative correlation found between male aggressiveness and female visitation in the little bustard population." — It is slightly unclear as to what this would imply. Perhaps add a note → "This prediction is difficult to test, but there was a negative correlation found between male aggressiveness and female visitation in the little bustard population, implying..."
Done.
Unlink — "fitness" in "the unmated males still receive fitness benefits." as it is linked just a section above.
Done.
"This could work both for the males in within the group as well as any female who visits the lek." — Perhaps → "This could work for both the males within the group as well as any female who visits the lek."?
Thanks, fixed.


### References
Reference 11 — "Animal Behavior" should be in italics.
Done.
Reference 14 — "PLOS ONE" → "PLOS One".
Done.
Reference 33 — "Cengage Learning" in "publisher".
Wadsworth seems to be correct for Starr & Taggart?
Chiswick Chap, I found "Cengage Leaning" from Google Books when I googled the text it covered. I missed that the link you provided had "Wadsworth" as the publisher. That should be all good then. I brought a reference back that got lost during edits. All seems well now! — The Most Comfortable Chair 11:09, 4 October 2020 (UTC)


### External links
Since it is empty, it should either be removed or a few links should be added to it.
Done.
That should be all for now. It was a fine read and should pass. Thank you for your work! — The Most Comfortable Chair 06:26, 4 October 2020 (UTC)


### Final
GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written.
a (prose, spelling, and grammar):  b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): 

It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (reference section):  b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):  d (copyvio and plagiarism): 

It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects):  b (focused): 

It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias: 

It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.: 

It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales):  b (appropriate use with suitable captions): 

Overall:
Pass/Fail: 
The article is  well-written with intricate details and examples. It was a delight to review this and it meets the criteria. Thank you for all the time and effort you put into this! — The Most Comfortable Chair 11:15, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Where does this spelling come from? It's not standard in scientific writing, and it's really not standard in Swedish spelling? 94.255.243.101 (talk) 15:00, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Written English use of lek dates from the late 1860s and early 1870s. Llewelyn Lloyd's The Game birds and wild fowl of Sweden and Norway (1867) introduces it (capitalised and in single quotes, as 'Lek') explicitly as a Swedish term.
So it dates from 1867?  Does the first sentence add anything? —Tamfang (talk) 16:55, 22 April 2025 (UTC)