Talk:Evolutionary radiation
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- Evolutionary radiation. Seems some attributions are missing, the logical flow of the article is strangely convoluted, some facts need references and/or checking.
- example
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- ... several recent molecular analyses claim to show that ....
- ...These claims confuse basal splits with "radiations," ....
- analyses don't claim, the researchers do, so: ...Paleontologists claim that recent analyses show that...
- counterclaims should be attributed as well: Creationists argue the [aforementioned] analyses confuses splits...
The language is pretty NPOV IMHO. Even too NPOV, since the opening reads: Paleontologists long have argued. The fact (basic definition) should be seperated from peoples opinions about it. Added both Expert & Cleanup marker. -- Zanaq 09:16, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
The text is a slightly modified version of part of the abstract of a paper by J. Alroy of the Smithsonian institute (title 'Evidence for a Paleocene Evolutionary Radiation'). At best, the article is a reasonable account of one particular evolutionary radiation. No general definition of the process is given, and there is no mention of other important examples.
Minimum required work for a reasonable article:
- Introduction including definition and links to other relavent pages on evolutionary theory.
- Additional examples (including the Cambrian Radiation).
- Rewording to avoid NPOV issues.
In addition, the example of the Cenozoic mammalian radiation should be rewritten to fit the subject of the article and avoid direct citation without acnowledgement. -- Savage25
[edit] Total rewrite
What existed before has been critiqued above. I rewrote the entry to cover a wider range of organisms that just Tertiary mammals. Added various references. The radiation of mammals is dramatic but far from the most well studied or best understood radiation. The most detail comes from marine, shelly organisms (= the ones with the best fossil record) such as things like brachiopods and ammonites. Not as sexy as mammoths and sabre tooths, perhaps, but palaeontologists have a good deal more data to work with.
Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 21:07, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Adaptive radiation
Hi, how is this different from adaptive radiation? Should the articles be merged? --Kjoonlee 07:41, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
- They are related concepts, but in general scientific usage one is "large scale" and the other "small scale". Evolutionary radiation is typically how a big taxon (a phylum, say) goes from having a few species to having hundreds or thousands. Adaptive radiation is smaller, how a taxon (perhaps even a single species settling on an island) diversifies to occupy a group of niches. So there has been an evolutionary radiation of birds since the Mesozoic, but an adaptive radiation of finches on the Galapagos islands.
If you do a [literature search in Google], you will see that the two phrases are used by scientists within a single paper to mean these subtly different things. This is something these two Wikipedia articles need to clear up.
Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 13:51, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
