User:Camillegiuliano/sandbox

Article Evaluation

Content: If it is relevant, if there is anything distracting, any out of date information, anything missing.

Tone: Neutral tone, make sure there aren't any biases, make sure viewpoints aren't over or under represented.

Sources: Do all the links work, do those links actually support what is in the article, does each fact have a reliable source. biased source must be noted if they are used, but they aren't ideal.

Cladocera Evaluation

Content: All the information was relevant, but the introductory paragraph and the Description section were very similar in terms of content. The taxonomy section was laking, with several species having red links. The etymology sub-section also seemed too brief, only having 1 sentence.

Tone: The article's tone is neutral, there doesn't seem to be any biases. Because most of the information found in the article is just descriptions of the life cycle and appearance of the organism, there isn't really the problem of having multiple viewpoints.

Sources: One link (source #7 did not work). However, it was a privacy error, possibly due to not being on a private connection. Source 12 wasn't a very reliable source as it led to a Youtube video.

Talk page: C-Class Arthropod page, rated as Mid-Importance. No other conversation.

Article Selection

Ecology:

• Endemism
  • C-Class article. with high priority within the Biology Wikiproject. The content found within this page seems very disorganized and arbitrarily selected. Seems to be mostly examples.

• Primates (Mouse lemurs)
  • Article is very brief, only really mentions reproduction and lists all the species. May not be sufficiently relevant to the course material though.
• Coral/Coral bleaching
  • Zooxanthellae Photosynthetic bacteria that lives in symbiosis with corals. Cannot withstand high water temperatures, and causes coral bleaching when absent. Article is very brief, not organized at all, has no sub-headings, and essentially no talk page.

Final Topic: Paleoendemism

Paleoendemism

I added a citation to the introduction section of the page. I also put the kiwi bird content that was already present in the article into it's own heading that I called "Examples of Paleoendemism". The kiwi bird content as a whole doesn't seem relevant to the article at all. I read the article and it has nothing to do with whether or not the species is neo or paleoendemic, but more with the fact that the group of birds (which also includes emus and ostriches) evolved flightlessness independently from each other. I want to remove the entire section. I do want to add actual examples in the future. For the time being, I've edited the grammar and sentence structure since it was hard to follow.

The following are sections I have written myself and either have already added/will add to the Paleoendemism wikipedia article.

I added an etymology section, to maintain consistency between the Endemism page and its subpage. I used the same definition of endemism from the Endemism page, and added the etymology of the word paleo.

Etymology

The first part of the word, paleo, comes from the Greek word palaiós, meaning "ancient". The second part of the word, endemism is from New Latin endēmicus, from Greek ενδήμος, endēmos, "native". Endēmos is formed of en meaning "in", and dēmos meaning "the people".

Causes

Changes in climate are thought to be the driving force in creating endemic species, generally due to habitat loss. Regions where past climate change has been relatively stable with low extinction rates are more like to be endemic hotspots today. To qualify as hotspot, geographical areas have to have more than 0.5% of the world's plant species endemic to the region. These causes apply to both neoendemism and paleoendemism. However, paleoendemism differs as it does not require additional factors such as barriers and ecological opportunities as it does not rely on adaptive radiation like neoendemism does. It instead relies on the instability of other regions' climate, which may limit the range of a species to a more stable region, thus turning that species paleoendemic. Limited ability for dispersal is also important in the creation of endemic species. The two terms can essentially be defined as "cradles" of new species (neoendemism), or "museums" of old species (paleoendemism).

Anthropogenic Causes

There are also several human related causes to paleoendemism. Anthropogenic deforestation can severely restrict a species' habitat. In countries like Madagascar, a biodiversity hotspot with extreme proportions of endemism, where only 10% of the island's original forest cover is still intact, this can also lead to extinctions. Pollution, urbanization, and agricultural growth may also turn areas inhabitable for certain species, restricting their habitat in a similar way as deforestation. Human introduction of new predators, whether it be accidental or not, destabilizes ecosystems and can lead to the creation of paleoendemic species in undisturbed regions. In many cases today, paleoendemism is essentially a stepping stone into extinction, especially for those caused by anthropogenic disturbances.

Conservation Efforts

Endemism as a whole is often used to measure biodiversity. While this is not entirely correct, high levels of endemism is one of the required components of a biodiversity hot spot. Conservation efforts tend to be focused around these hot spots, and as result, endemic species reap many of the benefits. This association between biodiversity and endemism also works in the opposite way, where many conservation groups tend to pick areas to focus on based on their endemism rate.

Examples

The Scorpion of Montecristo (Euscorpius oglasae) from the small Italian island of the same name is likely a paleoendemic species. Glaciations during the Pleistocene are unlikely to have created land bridges between the 10.39 km² island and the Italian mainland, isolating the species for tens of thousands of years.

Gingko Biloba

Gingkos are a paleoendemic genus. From the Mesozoic to the mid-Cenozoic, these trees could be found throughout the world. However, today they can only be found in Japan and China in the wild.

Peer Reviews

These are the peer reviews I have done. I posted them in the Talk page of each person's sandbox.

Drawdown - By Tiffanyd4l

Everything in your article so far is neutral and unbiased! Everything seems to be properly cited. However, i don't believe you are required to cite other wikipedia pages you used. If anything, you should use the same source that page used for the fact you used. All the citation links work and seem relatively reliable, but there seems to be a lack in primary sources. Despite these few issues with the sources, the article itself looks great! Everything is well organized and goes through the fundamentals of the concept. Great work so far!

Groundwater Recharge - By Polidoroal

The article is very well written with no noticeable biases and nothing seems under or over represented. The use of subheadings was very well done and helps with the overall flow and organization of the article. All the citations work and are all from reliable sources and all the facts are properly cited. However, only one seems to be from a primary source. Maybe try finding one or two more to complement the one you have. Another thing you might consider is adding the links to other wikipedia articles mentioned within your article (words like drainage basin and climate change for example). These are very small issues and overall, your article is great! Nice Work!

Response To My Peer Reviews

Peer Reviewers: Ellinap, Polidoroal, Davidsma mcmaster, Sidneysmiith, ATekatch, Domixox, and OricaRyu.

Many of these reviews commented on the weaknesses of the kiwi bird portion of the article, which I did not write, so I will simply be ignoring those comments. I may come back if I have the time and try to fix that portion of the article in the future.

Sidney's peer review was especially helpful as it gave me clear pointers in terms of grammar mistakes or typos that had made their way into my article. I took all of these tips into consideration and added most of them to my article.

Alex's peer review mentioned wanting some non-anthropogenic causes of paleoendemism, which I had already put in the article at that time. This made me realize that putting a subheading delineating anthropogenic causes might be a good idea to help the flow of the article and allow people to better grasp the content. This peer review mentioned moving my scorpion example under the Paleoendemism on Islands section. This section of the article was added much later by students from another school, and I had completely forgot about the location of my scorpion example. I have decided to move my example down to the appropriate section.

Many of the reviews pointed towards expanding the causes section of my article. While I am still actively trying to do this, information on the matter is few and far between, and I may not be able to add much more to this section. However, many thought that my addition of the Conservation Efforts section was a great idea (despite it still being empty at the time of this response). I plan to hopefully find more information on this section and complete my final article!

Reflective Essay

This project has allowed to me view Wikipedia in an entirely different light. From evaluating articles, to reviewing and receiving reviews from my peers, to significantly contributing to an article, I was able to experience all aspects of the inner workings of the website. When I first started on my article, all it had was single sentence as a description followed by a less than ideal example. I was able to add several new sections to the article, as well as a couple of my own examples. My organization of the article also allowed another group of students, from another school, to contribute to the article and add a significant amount of new examples of paleoendemism to the article. These other student also helped out with my contributions to the article, offering me feedback on a few occasions and thanking me for my contributions. I was also lucky enough to receive a lot of feedback from my peers. These peer reviews allowed me to decide on which sections of my article I should focus on, as well as catch any typos or grammatical mistakes. All of this feedback was very constructive and also included positive notes. Many praised my unbiased tone and my addition of examples. Beyond my article, I also contributed by sending feedback to two of my peers, which allowed me to feel like i was contributing to something much larger than just my small article.

Overall, this assignment has made me realize the importance of a publicly available and easy to edit encyclopedia like Wikipedia. It allows people to work together to gather an incredible wealth of information into one place. I think that more people should consider contributing to Wikipedia, especially within the field of Ecology. While the main pages are well written and relatively extensive, many of the sub pages are seriously lacking, which was made very evident to me when I was searching for a potential topic. This project has also helped me improve my writing. It helped me improve my scientific by forcing me to write as unbiased as possible as well as increasing my awareness regarding biased writing. I enjoyed this assignment due to the fact that the end result is not only publicly available, but may be useful to others in the future, and has made me feel like I have significantly contributed to something much larger than myself.