Talk:Evolution/Archive 11

message: I know Evolution is already a Featured Article but I think we can do one better and get another evolutionary biology-related article up to Featured Article Status.  I have access to all research materials at the University of Maryland (including all notable biological journals), and more importantly, I have the desire to see this through and get it done.  I just don't have the subject matter down pat quite yet.  I was thinking maybe evolutionary developmental biology.  This is still in the planning stages though so I welcome any other suggestions.  --Cyde Weys talkcontribs 16:45, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If you'd like to do that, I propose the natural selection article, which is probably much more trafficked (I'm inventing this usage of the word "trafficked" right now) and has more grist for the mill. Graft 18:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

text: *Agreed, how much trafficking it gets already is probably a good metric to decide on.  Anyone have any other suggestions?  This looks like a good choice to me.  --Cyde Weys talkcontribs 09:51, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Let's get another featured article 

message: I have removed the link to purifying selection in front of the background selection line as I believe it to be erroneous. All kinds of selection remove deleterious alleles by definition. Purifying and stabilising selection are the same, as are positive and directional selection. - Samsara 01:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Purifying selection is identical with balancing, not background selection 

message: This is a comment directed at user Marcosantezana. It's great to see you doing so much work on this section. After having a look at the revision history, I am wondering, why did you include the Siller article? The article is quite specific in scope, and in my personal view does not work well for general reading. - Samsara 01:13, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Siller's article 

message: Sorry for the "horizontal tranfer" so to speak of a deeply nested thread and the end of a subsection to here, but it seemed the thing to do.
On the table are two related issues: choice of the intro image and representation of "tree of life".
Subset(s) of the tree of life might be better or might be a good addition.
An "unrooted" tree of life is closer to the evidence (think communal pool of genes replacing an adam and eve bacteria).
Here is what the tree of life looks like at the twig level.
Life, like a river, is more a process than a thing and some things play a greater part in the process and some things playa lesser part. Viruses play a big part, mutate, evolve, have genes. So they can't survive without other life forms. Same with humans. Only plants are "life" because they can do it without the rest of the ecosystem? I guess plants that need insects to pollinate aren't alive any more than viruses.
Communities of life evolve. The division into parts is sometimes useful and sometimes not. WAS 4.250 00:50, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Conveniently, wikipedia has a section Life#Defining the concept of life. As for a subtree, I would recommend Drosophila, as it's very well studied and uncontroversial; the latter is probably rare to find. I also like the H5N1 example because it's topical and people won't care too much about the exact structure because it's very transient in any case. If they get it roughly right, it's a success. Maybe I'll have time to hunt a Drosophila example later. - Samsara 01:39, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd recommend the vertebrate phylogeny, actually. It's pretty well-studied and much more familiar than Drosophila. Here is an accurate mammalian tree... it's pretty easy to duplicate this if someone wants to make a better one. Graft 05:26, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it would need to be shrunk a bit. The link doesn't work in Firefox 1.0.7 btw, you just get a page telling you off for externally linking to it. - Samsara 11:39, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Tree of life, viruses, continuation of earlier nested thread

message: many creationists use this arguments and i´ll tell why they are wrong and work.
#Evolution has never been observed. 
#Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. 
#There are no transitional fossils. 
#The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance. 
#Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved. 
#it have been, a fly were onces different races that could mate (still the same species) then 20 years later they couldnt mate, wich means they are different species.
#no it doesnt, that law only work on closed system, earth isnt, we get low entropy energy from the sun, and it is by life transformed into high entropy heat. Face it. life increase it aswell. If it decrease the entropy by 20 it increase it aswell with 21.
#the chance of all individuals becoming a foosil is so small, like in sweden the chance for one of us become a fossil is very small, its even small that anyone in the world today shall. So its logical that the arts in the middle get jumped, and if the differens is to small they fall in the same species as the one before or after.
#it did, if we put a bacteria in a ppol of water, where we have 2 places spitting out different chemicals they will evolve into 2 different specieses that live on each chemical spitter, wich im pretty sure have been shown. we have 2 different specieses from 1.
#it have been proved, this is acctualy one of the stupidiest arguments you can come with. A theory can be prown and still be called theory, einsteins theory of general relativity have been so proved as it can and is still called a theory. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.208.244.194 (talk • contribs) 15:33, 19 December 2005   (UTC)
Edited for formatting but not for anything else (including even capitalization).  --Cyde Weys talkcontribs 20:39, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  ANti Anti Proof against evolution 

message: I noticed a good number of links that are missing in the "See also" section and I realized it was because they were already distributed throughout the article in the form of "Main article here".  It is my contention that all of the links should be at the bottom of the See also section anyway.  It didn't make sense that natural selection wasn't there.  I'm just trying to get consensus before I make this change.  Thanks for the advice.  --Cyde Weys talkcontribs 20:16, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there any way that Template:Main can be rewritten to effect this? - Samsara 20:17, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

text: *Huh?  I don't see how that's even remotely possible.   just creates italicized links to the main article.  It doesn't have anything to do with the See also section.  Heck, some pages that use  don't have See also sections anyways.  --Cyde Weys talkcontribs 20:47, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, a new template could definitely be created that achieves this. There are other templates that manage to produce links within articles and in a separate section at the bottom, e.g. Template:Babel - Samsara 16:59, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should "See also" be comprehensive? 

message: According to the BBC: Colin Norman, news editor of Science, said "[S]cientists tend to take for granted that evolution underpins modern biology [...] Evolution is not just something that scientists study as an esoteric enterprise. It has very important implications for public health and for our understanding of who we are" and Dr. Mike Ritchie, of the school of biology at the University of St Andrews, UK said "The big recent development in evolutionary biology has obviously been the improved resolution in our understanding of genetics. Where people have found a gene they think is involved in speciation, I can now go and look how it has evolved in 12 different species of fly, because we've got the genomes of all these species available on the web."  WAS 4.250 04:25, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Or how about this one: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." - Theodosius Dobzhansky. - Samsara 08:25, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  We have an article on Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution already, but let's try to keep clear of witty quotes.  You can quote Haldane till the cows come home but it won't improve the article and just attract some quote miners with their own. — Dunc|☺ 11:25, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure that the suggestion was to put them in the article... Not my suggestion, anyway! - Samsara 11:29, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Quotes

message: "Through a series of evolutionary analyses, the six internal genes of human H5N1 viruses were also found to have diverged generally into two distinguishable evolutionary groups." from Evolutionary characterization of the six internal genes of H5N1 human influenza A virus WAS 4.250 04:58, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: H5N1 and evolution

message: I know that the human chromosome is a result of the merger of chromosomes 2p and 2q in our simian ancestors, but I was unable to find anything discussing this on Wikipedia.  I'm posting this message here first as I want to make sure I'm not duplicating before I create an article on it and because it's related to evolution as it is very compelling evidence of our common descent with the apes.  Here's a good article with citations.  --Cyde Weys votetalk 15:39, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ape chromosomes and human chromosomes 

message: Justbob added the following paragraph to the evidence of "macroevolution" section:
 However, one needs to also understand that noone knows for sure if these new hawthorn flies
 just appered or maybe they were there all the time and noone ever descovered them untill now
 so how would they know if they spontaneously emerged? Also we must take into consdieration
 the fact that these flies could have been brought with apple trees. Not only that, but the
 other thing we must keep in mind is the fact that adaptations do happen, but it was in there
 genes to start with that allows things to Adapt to there surroundings. Also if there is
 little evidence of interbreeding then that can not be rulled out as a possabillity.
I reverted his changes because they were poorly written, and frankly, I don't think they deserve to be rewritten in better English as these "objections" read like mindless creationist claptrap.  "Ohhh, they didn't evolve, they were always there, we just didn't find them until now!"  Yeah, uh-huh.  Keep non-scientific nonsense out of the article, please.  --Cyde Weys votetalk 18:06, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Some of his concerns are addressed by Evolvability. - Samsara 18:25, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A while back I saw two other editors have this interaction: some completely off the wall comment added to an article, then reverted with the comment "Original research is not allowed so please provide a source". It's polite, true, gets the job done, and sometimes they are actually right AND have a source! WAS 4.250 18:30, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Not quite sure what you're implying here. The hawthorn story holds as originally written in the article. Don't go believing that scientists lack scepticism! It can be shown by DNA studies of the two races that they diverged as recently as the hypothesis of divergence post-apple-introduction requires. The explanation given in the article is the most parsimonious for the data. All further discussion should take good note of Occam's razor. - Samsara 20:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You say "Not quite sure what you're implying here." I am sorry for not being clear. Being terse to the point of cryptic is one of my many uncountable failings. My comment ONLY dealt with what to say in the "edit summary". WAS 4.250 22:51, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Justbob's addition on Hawthorn flies 

message: Over at Talk:Charles_Darwin an editor has made some changes to remove all references to evolution as a theory and referring to natural selection a the theory and evolution as a proposition/observation. I reverted once, but I thought I'd solicit some opinions here. --JPotter 01:59, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need some expert opinion 

message: I just want to clear up one last possible misunderstanding before I let things be on the coalescence issue. I put it here rather than the bottom of the page because I think the portal biology post should garner all the attention by being at the bottom of the page. So here goes...
Coalescence applies whether or not recombination happens, because, although different bits of genome (haplotype blocks) may have different ancestries, all current copies of one particular haplotype block will coalesce to a common ancestor, who may be more or less recent. These ancestors then again coalesce. Hence, everything eventually coalesces! - Samsara 00:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: One last point about coalescence

message: Just realized the "not enough" fossils issue was removed from the misconceptions section. That is one of the major misconceptions I encounter with creationists (ie: Evolution requires lots of transitional species, that means there should be lots of transitional fossils); and it should be put back in some form. I realize other parts of the article mention fossilization is rare; but I think it could bare repeating as a direct response to this prevalent misconception. - RoyBoy 800 01:40, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The least we can do is link to the fossil record which elaborates on it; so me do. - RoyBoy 800 01:45, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fossils 

message: Hey guys, I'm the current maintainer of Portal:Biology and since I figure I "hang" with you guys a lot, you could perhaps help me.  Just check out the portal and comment on things you think should be changed (or make the changes yourself).  I especially need some more "Did you knows".  Also, I'm currently in the process of taking over Portal:Science, so if you want to help me with that too I'd be grateful.  Note that I set the current Featured article on the science portal to evolution.  Just trying to get some exposure for us!  The Science Portal is important because it's linked from the top of the main page.  Not a bad spot, eh?  --Cyde Weys votetalk 02:57, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help with Portal Biology