Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology

Neural network

The usage of neural network is under discussion. See the requested move at talk:biological neural network and the discussion at talk:neural network. 65.94.47.63 (talk) 05:38, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Food web

Food web is currently being rewritten, and will hopefully go to FA. Any contributions from people in this project will be much appreciated. --Epipelagic (talk) 06:11, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Biology Good Articles

If anyone is interested there are a few articles that were started by students on various medicine or biology related topics as part of a project. They were submitted for Good Article status, but due to the backlog are only just being reviewed now. If anyone is interested in Neurolaw, Hyperkinesia (neurology), Satellite glial cell, KC (patient), or the Cushing reflex and would be willing to address reviewers concerns could they please make themselves known at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations. Many of them appear well sourced and quite broad so hopefully only slight touches will be needed to pass the articles. Thanks AIRcorn (talk) 06:26, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Gray-crowned Rosy Finch

A question was raised at Gray-crowned Rosy Finch. Sadly, the author is missing, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:03, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Invitation to assist in adding donated content: GLAM/ARKive

Hi,

I am the Wikipedia Outreach Ambassador to ARKive, who have kindly agreed to donate an initial 200 article texts about endangered species from their project, to Wikipedia, under a CC-BY-SA license. Details are on the GLAM/ARKive project page. Your help, to merge the donated texts into articles, would be appreciated. Guidelines for doing so are also on the above page. Once articles have been expanded using the donated texts, we are also seeking assistance in having those articles translated into other languages. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns, on the project's talk page, or my own. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 13:34, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

CfD on parasitology

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_July_23#Category:Parasitism. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 19:33, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

RFC on identifiers

There is an RFC on the addition of identifier links to citations by bots. Please comment. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:53, 15 August 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) 02:33, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

This is now the subject of an AN/I thread. There are a very large number of other articles that need vetting. Quite a few deal with biology or biochemistry. Another editor has created a full list of articles here, to aid vetting/cleanup. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 02:29, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Help needed with Tinbergen's four questions

Hi. I've been editing on Evolutionary psychology, which has been a controversial article but also needs some basic clean up. There is a table, sourced to an unpublished paper by Randolph Nesse, referring to Tinbergen's four questions. It doesn't seem to make much sense and I can't tell whether this is textbook evolutionary biology or rather new research relating only to evolutionary psychology. The Tinbergen questions article carries a virtually identical table, as well as a diagram directly from Tinbergen, but the relationship between the two isn't clearly explained. I would be very grateful if someone could look at the Tinbergen's four questions article, to help to make the sourcing clear, and the argument clear, and double-check that there is no original research in it. Once that is clarified, the evolutionary psychology page will have something solid to refer to. Thanks very much. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:34, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Nesse is undoubtedly a reputable source. An explanation of the table (though not the table itself) can be found in this section that he wrote for the Oxford Handbook of Affective Science. Looie496 (talk) 15:14, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

HY box

Could someone vet the article HY box for accuracy? It has been created by a user which seems to have created a large number of articles by incoherently copying and pasting sentences from journal papers. Cheers, —Ruud 11:24, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Note: this article was created almost entirely by copying from other wikipedia articles without attribution and copying sentences from article abstracts. I have attempted to remove the offending material but the article essentially needs recreating with original text Jebus989^✰ 12:38, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Request for Comment: Capitalization of common names of animal species

Stale: The discussion this was advertising has been archived.

Journal of Cosmology sockpuppet cleanup

Seems we just caught the whole bunch of the disruptive editors in Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/BookWorm44. I'm going to comb their edits over the next few days, but there were a lot of socks and a lot of edits, so help would be appreciated. This mostly affects Astrobiology, Big Bang, Quantum-Consciousness, Evolution and related topics, as well as a handful of history and religion topics. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:22, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

List of important publications in biology

Did anyone here notice that List of important publications in biology just got deleted? Does anyone care?  --Lambiam 21:01, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Such an article seems pretty problematic. How is "important" defined? Or is it just supposed to be a list of pretty much all publications, in which case how does it differ from various non-wikipedia library catalogs and the like? I guess I'm saying I'm fine with the deletion. Kingdon (talk) 01:40, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

There were guidelines for inclusion, the same as those for similar lists. "important" should be defined as the publication being notable. A lot of confusion has arisen because the word "important" was added to all such lists after an earlier AfD discussion on this list. There are certainly problems, but some of us have been trying on other similar lists to remove the problems. Just before it was deleted, I removed all entries that were not to publications that had their own article on wikipedia, but even that did not satisfy people. --Bduke (Discussion) 02:34, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm always amazed when I look at _other_ WikiProjects' talk pages (i.e. besides Mathematics) and see how sleepy they are. Many hours or even days go by without a posting! No wonder people can come here who don't know how to spell "biology" and delete important articles without waking anyone up. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

The stated grounds for deletion was that there is no published authoritative list of important publications in biology, thus indicating that the list is notable. But in fact here is one. The person who proposed deletion, User:Curb Chain, admitted that his search for such sources consisted only of entering the phrase "important publications in biology" into Google. Apparently what is needed is that one or more such works be cited, and also for each listed item separately, so authoritative source be cited, attesting to its notability. As far as I know "Curb Chain" come here to this WikiProject to ask people to come up with such things to improve the article so that the grounds for deletion would not apply.

In view of these facts, what would people think of a formal deletion review? Michael Hardy (talk) 22:42, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Let us wait until all the publication list AfDs are closed. --Bduke (Discussion) 03:11, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Biology to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biology/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 21:50, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

copy-paste problem of article Phyllanthus acidus

Hey,

the article Phyllanthus acidus is more or less copy-pasted from here. I am not sure how you handle such a case in the Englisch WP, therefore I am using this page to inform you. Regards --IKAl (talk) 20:18, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I have looked at it briefly and also referred the case to a very experienced member of the copywrite team. Will get back to you. Cheers, Faendalimas ^talk 20:35, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you :) --IKAl (talk) 20:53, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Plant_perception_(paranormal)

This article needs the attention of an expert or someone knowledgable in plant biology as it contains many fringe claims, cheers. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:54, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

So does this article: Plant_perception_(physiology)#Sound. IRWolfie- (talk) 18:53, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Neurotransmitter receptor

Please see Talk:Neurotransmitter receptor#Please Help: Have Information, Intimidated by table formatting. Thanks,  Chzz  ►  04:49, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Adam and Eve

There is a section at Adam and Eve that relates to science, belief and interpretation. There is a disagreement with how to term the science, whether it should be classified as something specific to humans or more general as in mitochondrial or population genetics. Discussion here: Talk:Adam_and_Eve#No_really.2C_it_is_genetics. I am requesting for someone to comment or maybe provide even a better scientific source for the statement the article makes. Thanks. Jesanj (talk) 20:23, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Physical description vs Description - Geographical range vs Range/Distribution

I have opened up discussion at Talk:Black_mamba#Article_headings about whether the above two adjectives (i.e. "Physical" and "Geographical" are useful in headings at the Black mamba article as I and another editor have a difference of opinion on the matter. It does raise the question over whether this should be a more general discussion to plant animal (and fungus) articles in general, but I have not encountered anyone else before who thinks they are a good idea. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:54, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I have commented at Talk:Black_mamba#Article_headings. I wonder though if the discussion would serve better here. Cheers, Faendalimas ^talk 03:20, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Bibliography of biology

List of important publications in biology was redirected without discussion to the above article.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Curb Chain (talk • contribs)

This was followed by a proper move discussion at Talk:Bibliography of biology#Requested move asking for it to be moved back to List of important publications in biology. That was closed with no consensus to move it back. --Bduke (Discussion) 03:59, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

The two more serious issues are:

1. that this list/bibliography was moved as part of a general discussion to move all such lists of science publications to bibliographies with this one being a trial. Discussion on the others is ongoing at Wikipedia:WikiProject Bibliographies and Wikipedia:WikiProject Science pearls, with the older latter project now a task force of the newer former project. These projects need your support.
2. that this list/bibliography has been very inactive until it was proposed for deletion. It needs more attention from editors in this Project. --Bduke (Discussion) 03:59, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Epigenetics

• Epigenetics - main article
  • Epigenetic theory - overlapping content
  • Transgenerational epigenetics - overlapping content
  • Soft inheritance - overlapping content
    • Inheritance of acquired characteristics - negatively characterized as outdated and disproven Soviet dogma that had disastrous administrative consequences
    • Lamarckism - categorized as an obsolete scientific theory, despite contemporary re-analyses within the mainstream scientific community
    • Lysenkoism - depicts Lamarckism, and, specifically, the inheritance of acquired characteristics, as being a textbook example of pseudoscience among Lysenko's many bedlamitic absurdities

This interrelated series of articles is one of the most disoriented, contradictory and factually compromised sets that I've encountered on our project in quite some time. Moreover, the overlapping nature of content and lack of adequately unambiguous central navigation is confusing, even for someone who has existing familiarity with the general topic. I'm not certain of how much available manpower WikiProject Biology has to offer at the moment, but I'd like to get the ball rolling on a collaborative effort of some sort.   — C M B J   04:56, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Featured portal nominated for deletion

A Featured Portal related to this WikiProject, Portal:Biological warfare, has been nominated for deletion. Please see the discussion, at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Biological warfare. Thank you for your time, — Cirt (talk) 04:12, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Update: The discussion was closed as "Speedy Keep". — Cirt (talk) 05:06, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Basic concepts of/introduction to ...

There is an AfD on Basic concepts of quantum mechanics that raises some important questions for many technical articles:

1. Should there be separate articles for explanations at different knowledge levels?
2. If so, how many levels, and how can readers be guided to the level that is appropriate for them? RockMagnetist (talk) 00:33, 29 November 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#Restoration_of_Evolutionary_biology for the discussion. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 03:46, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Animal mating footage debate

FYI: This is a pointer to a relevant discussion on another talk page.

The alleged issue of whether is can be encyclopedic to include a video (or even a still image) of animal mating behavior has been raised at Talk:Cat#Mating behavior video vs. still photo. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:37, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Sodium in biology

Sodium in biology appears to be a new article. It may be an unintentional content fork (I don't know for sure). Also the title may not reflect the content of article. I don't work on biology articles and I thought this project would be interested in this article. Thanks. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 16:47, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Did a quick look through of the article in question and the one on sodium. The article is currently mostly a content fork, but I think that many more biological aspects of sodium regulation and use could be put into the article. Perhaps, the sodium article can have a main article template in the biology section. This will encourage other users to expand the topic with stuff that will not fit in the sodium article. (Disclaimer: not given this much thought though)Staticd (talk) 06:44, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Vertebrate trachea needs work

The Vertebrate trachea (pointed to from the trachea disambiguation page) needs work. I suggest using the Bronchus page as a guide. Sorry, this is the first time in years that I've posted that other people should clean something up, I'm just busy this week. If you'd like to contact me, please do so on my talk page, thanks. :) Banaticus (talk) 07:25, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

WikiWomen's History Month

Hi everyone. March is Women's History Month and I'm hoping a few folks here at WP:Biology will have interest in putting on events (on and off wiki) related to women's roles in Biology's history, society and culture. We've created an event page on English Wikipedia (please translate!) and I hope you'll find the inspiration to participate. These events can take place off wiki, like edit-a-thons, or on wiki, such as themes and translations. Please visit the page here: WikiWomen's History Month. Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to seeing events take place! SarahStierch (talk) 00:50, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Biophysics project

Hi all, I'm working with User:Dcrjsr to run an editing workshop for biophysicists in a couple of weeks. We anticipate a large audience -- perhaps 50-75 working scientists who want to help edit. I am thinking about starting a new biophysics WikiProject to provide a workspace for them and future biophysicists... alternatively, I might just start a task force page in the physics wikiproject.

Thoughts? Would there be interest in this community in working on a dedicated biophysics project? There is certainly enough to do on various biophysics articles, which of course are highly interdisciplinary. cheers, -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:47, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

If there is to be a WikiProject Biophysics, would it be more suitable directly under Biology, or as a subproject under Molecular and Cellular Biology? Feedback? Dcrjsr (talk) 15:04, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• If more people are coming to this area, I would be willing to help as time allows. Right now this is almost a desert. The recruitment of scientists may be difficult. I have seen several interesting strategies here:

1. Bringing information resources from your lab to wikipedia (Rfam).
2. Asking your graduate student to make his PhD project for wikipedia (ProteinBoxBot)
3. Asking students to study certain subjects in the literature, write down a brief review of something they have learned, and place it to the wikispace (MicrobeWiki).

Unfortunately, methods 1 and 2 can only be used by someone who works in the area of Bioinformatics, rather than Biophysics. Other ideas? Biophys (talk) 16:31, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, the Society for Neurobiology has been successful in getting their members to work on a Wikiproject Neurobiology, so we want to try the same thing. On reflection, I do believe it should be directly under Wikiproject Biology, not under Molecular and Cellular Biology or in Physics. A task force might be more practical, but I think a Wikiproject would be much more effective in motivating people. Does anyone have further advice? At any rate, if this goes forward, we'll indeed ask for your help - thanks very much. Dcrjsr (talk) 04:07, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

You may wish to look at recently created WikiProject_Computational_Biology and related discussions [1], [2]. This looks like interesting idea. Speaking more generally, anyone can donate their already exiting texts or illustrations to wikipedia or wikisource under appropriate copyright conditions, rather than create everything from scratch. Biophys (talk) 17:59, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for those tips! Dcrjsr (talk) 18:28, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Biophysics has now been started, with a skeleton main page, and we will be recruiting new participants at next week's Biophysical Society meeting. Any interested Wikipedians would be extremely welcome!! Dcrjsr (talk) 18:28, 20 February 2012 (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) 03:14, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Transitional Fossil peer-review

• Wikipedia: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) 00:28, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Paleontology

{{Infobox Paleontology}} has been nominated for deletion. 70.24.251.71 (talk) 08:51, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Circadian matters

I am about to embark on improvements to articles relating to circadian clocks, with a particular interest in improving content related to plant circadian clocks. So far I have edited the lede for circadian rhythm, and have moved circadian oscillator to circadain clock. Anyone with any sort of background or interest in chronobiology or circadian clocks in any way, feel free to give me a hand =) the state of affairs at the moment is a bit dire! Gorton k (talk) 21:40, 1 March 2012 (UTC)