Talk:Exaptation

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[edit] Revision

Starting with the intent to edit this article (per early spring 07), I ended up completely revising it. The original article lacked references and headings. Besides including those, I inserted two examples that would be understandable to a lay audience (e.g., high school students). The process of exaptation helps to explain why living organisms sometimes appear jury-rigged, as is now explained. (Related articles—preadaptation, co-option, and evolutionary psychology—will point to this article.)

Hopefully, the new structure of this article will facilitate other scholars correcting my errors & improving upon my content. (I see that TimVickers w/ a biochem background has recently improved this article. I look forward to his improvements on my changes.) W Pete Welch 01:01, 6 June 2007 (UTC)W Pete Welch

[edit] Merge

Should preadaptation not be merged with this? I was originally going to propose that it be merged into adaptation, but then found this much larger article. Richard001 10:44, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

That seems very appropriate. I'd support that.--Talionis ^{(Shout me · Stalk me)} 09:51, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Remove Controversy Section?

I'm proposing the controversy section be removed, for the simple reason that it's *not* a controversy about exaptation, but a controversy caused by the possibility of exaptation. The concept of exaptation isn't controversial at all, AFAIK. The text in the controversy section should be a part of the article of evolutionary psychology instead, and does in fact appear (in reduced form) in the controversies page of that discipline. Plus, stylistically, it just seems to come out of left field and take up an unusually large proportion of the page given the only tangential relevance to exaptation as a whole. Mokele (talk) 03:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Instead of removing, I think the criticism section should be given proper context, which arguably it now has. I would consider myself a member of the "lay" audience, and the reason I looked up exaptation was to understand the "evolution wars" arguments. If there was no criticism section at all, I would not have found what I was looking for. On ther other hand, without the proper context, I wouldn't have been properly informed as to what elements of the exaptation concept are widely accepted, and which parts (or perhaps extrapolations of the theory) are still under debate. I think wiki should serve multiple audiences, and so far, this article does the job for me.72.92.17.240 (talk) 20:42, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

What, exactly, did you get out of the controversy section, though? IMHO, it is far too specific; pertaining to one argument about one field. I was thinking the article would be better served by relocating the current section to the page on controversies about evolutionary psychology and replacing it with three sections currently lacking: one with a list of examples (accompanied by short explanations), another with difficulties and issues in identifying a trait as an exaptation, and finally a section on the implications of exaptation to evolutionary thought. Would this serve the same purpose from your POV? Mokele (talk) 01:14, 17 April 2008 (UTC)