Talk:Behavioral ecology

Page rewritten 5 July 2005 by Craig Barnett. Only the first sentance remains from the first post.

Merger proposal

Behavioral ecology and ethoecology are really just the same thing but with different names. So, we should move everything from ethoecology into behavioral ecology (even though ethoecology is a more interesting name). It wouldn't make a huge difference since there isn't much in ethoecology anyway. --Skyler :^| 21:19, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Not a good idea! ethoecology is a meaningless Americanism. The term Behavioural ecology has been coined for a great many years now and is understood. It may be worth considering having a note in the Behavioural Ecology section to the effect that it may also be referred to as ethoecology. The study of ethology is a much finer field than the study of behaviour and thus this should be reflected in the umbrella title of the section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by FatPumpkin (talk • contribs) 08:44, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you understand. Ethoecology, "the meaningless Americanism," would no longer be an article and any extra information that it holds not within the Behavioral ecology page would be transferred. That would probably only be a sentence or two. --Skyler :^| 01:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea then. As stated in my original post I would agree with the general title being "Behavioural Ecology" and maybe including a short paragraph documenting ethoecology. I was just making sure we were not proposing having a combined title of "Behavioural Ecology/Ethoecology"FatPumpkin (talk) 09:01, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I would merge them, in fact, I would put ethoecology as a subsection under behavioral ecology (BE) (and then I'd put HBE under BE, but that's another merger discussion). Overall, etheocology is not a very developed article, and so it would fit nicely into BE. Rhetth (talk) 21:44, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I'm not sure what to do with the ethoecology article then, though. -Skyler 19:29, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

It's not even ethnoecology, it's etoecology. As far as I can tell it is a term that has been made up by some group in Argentina. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.254.241.131 (talk) 20:33, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Merged. Though in fact there was nothing of any value at Etoecology, so there was nothing to merge. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 23:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Please Explain

Phylogenetic constraints are generally factors that might stop certain lineages developing certain behavioral or morphological traits. Hence, it is no coincidence that generally birds are able to fly and mammals cannot. The evolutionary history of these lineages have made it profitable for birds to fly and for mammalian feet to remain planted on the ground.

Please explain what you mean by this, so I can rewrite it. What "factors" are you talking about?

72.8.108.76 17:10, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Optimization should be written

The current article on optimization is maths based and shows little mention of biological optimality. Some one should either add it to the existing article or create Optimization (biology) or Optimality modeling. Jack (talk) 16:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Convergent evolution

The relationship with Convergent evolution seems obvious, but is not discussed. Also, "Helpers at the nest" is an obvious example not mentioned. (Btw, you would think there should be a better term for "helpers at the nest".) ~E 74.60.29.141 (talk) 00:08, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

The lead, etc.

The lead [Brit: lede] -imo- seems to rely too heavily on anecdotal interpolation to simply explain "What is this?"; rather, it should briefly define the topic and hopefully include a mention relating to each section of the article. The "for example..." and "for instance.." [stuff] should be relegated to the sections of the main article. Btw, the foundation of 'Behavioral ecology' seems to be almost entirely based on anecdotal synthesis/interpolation. I suspect that somebody came up with a cool-sounding buzzword for an NSF grant; and worked backward from there. "Behavioral ecology" should be something similar to: the study of behavioral inter-relational dependency networks, - not intra- ... But I digress; my point is simply that the lead could be more clear and concise, with anecdotal examples reserved primarily for the article. ~Eric F 74.60.29.141 (talk) 01:00, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Eric. This is a huge topic but the lede is confusing for the lay reader. I believe it should be very brief and simple, e.g. 'Behavioral ecology, or ethoecology, is the study of the ecological and evolutionary basis for animal behavior, and the roles of behavior in enabling an animal to adapt to its environment.'.

I would be tempted to leave out or de-emphasise 'ethoecology': This is not a term I have heard or read - perhaps a US only word?

Once there is a simple lede, other matters can be dealt with under headings such as 'History', 'Development', 'Theories'.

I find it rather surprising that for such a large subject there are only 4 references. This needs to be adressed.

__DrChrissy (talk) 18:05, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Behavioral Ecology disambiguation needed

I think an Disambiguation pages is needed here, as there is now an wiki page for Behavioral Ecology An example content for such page could be:

"Behavioral Ecology is the subject of:

• Intersection of the research fields of ethology and ecology
• Behavioral Ecology, a scientific journal

Upcoming Revisions

I am a Teaching Assistant for a Behavioral Ecology class which is intending on greatly extending this article. We will be basing these revisions on Davies, Krebs, West, An Introduction to Behavioral Ecology. We will be using one class session to add the majority of these changes so they likely appear as a barrage of additions and edits. We have been expanding many articles throughout the semester and are very familiar with proper formatting and citation usage. We hope this will spur more interest into this subject as we will be linking many of the evolutionary concepts and animal examples to this page as is appropriate.Gsibbel 21:13, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I have used writing Wikipedia articles as a teaching aid in the past and this was a very positive experience for the students. I am a little concerned, however, that you appear to be intending to use only one text for the sorce material. One issue that this article needs to address is its lack of references. May I suggest that your students use several sources. This is also likely to avoid potential plagiarism of the Davies et al. book. Best of luck in the exercise.__DrChrissy (talk) 17:01, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

We intend on using the textbook for framework while using mostly primary sources. The students as a whole have done a large amount of research for their individual articles which will culminate and be applied in this page. We share a very similar opinion on the usefulness of wikipedia editing for everyone involved. Thanks for the advice. Gsibbel 23:42, 28 November 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gsibbel (talk • contribs)

Great! I look forward to reading the edits for an important article that definately needs expansion.__DrChrissy (talk) 16:09, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Gsibbel. I'm not sure if it is your students that are placing insertions into this article, but it seems rather likely it is, given your message above. The additions of course are very welcome and in the main are very well written. However, referencing is a problem. There needs to be a consistency in style and format. It seems that almost every student is using their own method. I have spent quite some time trying to fix some of these, but as soon as I fix some, others appear. It seems to me it would be a massive task for other editors to correct these, so perhaps the students should be asked to look again at their work and edit these according to the Wikipedia advice on referencing. Oh - by the way, the journal Animal Behaviour is English so there is a U in Behaviour. ;-) Keep up the good work. __DrChrissy (talk) 21:08, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

"

Consistency in citations and references

There has been a sudden increase in the additions to this article (see above?). One problem is that there has been inconsistency of referencing and citations. This is mainly with references to the Davies et al. books with editors using references to multiple pages - references should be as detailed as possible so that information can be verified. I have tried to fix some of these references bu tin the process became confused as to which group of pages were being referred to. It may therefore be simplest to revert my changes and editors agree on a standardised style of citations and references and edit their own sections accordingly. My favoured method would be the approach used in the last section of the article which gives the pagination in the text , e.g. . __DrChrissy (talk) 19:07, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

You are correct that this is the work of the students in my class. It's fairly amazing how they completely revolutionized this formerly lackluster article in only a few days. As in any article, each writer has their own particular style in which they write. They majority of the edits/contributions are now up since the class is winding down, but hopefully they will continue to add and refine for weeks to come. My apologies not anticipating this issue, but in our defense, the class has done extraordinary things with their personal pages with many being reviewed for good articles. In fact, the first was just confirmed this afternoon. The class has been made aware of the citing issue, and I am confident that it will be standardized. But even if some bugs remain, this article is still a huge improvement in every way over what I initially read on Monday. Thanks for bringing this matter to my students attention. We will be more prepared in the next class section for both this page and others which need such heavy work. Gsibbel (talk Gsibbel 23:55, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the swift reply. I agree with you that the article has been much improved by your students and let's hope they will fix the referencing issues in the days to come. Good work All__DrChrissy (talk) 16:20, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Copyright concerns

The recent numerous additions to this article are welcome and are generally of a very high quality. However, I suspect that some of the sections might be simply 'cut and paste' of primary sources. If so, this would be against copyright and WP policy unless appropriate attribution is given. Many new editors are not aware of copyright issues and information can be found at Wikipedia:Copyrights and Wikipedia:Plagiarism. Can I politely suggest that recent edits are checked by the original editors for these potential concerns. All the best__DrChrissy (talk) 19:26, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Can you give examples so that they can be remedied? If this is indeed the case, it is a major concern of mine. Gsibbel (talk) Gsibbel 23:20, 10 December 2012 (UTC)