Talk:The Extended Phenotype
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[edit] article needs expansion and simplicity
I think this article is not very clear to the casual reader. Since there are some pages which redirect to this page, it would be good to begin with a clear and simple definition, along with some concrete examples, of what exactly is meant by "extended phenotype". Cazort 18:29, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
I second this request (Ben, July 8, 2006) 68.161.173.184 19:15, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Thirded, however I am not familiar enough with the concept to do so at this time. — coelacan talk — 05:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] clumsy sentence
Here's a particularly clumsy sentence: "He then goes further to point to first animal morphology and ultimately animal behaviour, which appears advantageous not to the animal itself, but rather to a parasite which afflicts it." What's the parasite? The gene? That's not very accurate language. The gene that makes an organism can hardly be considered to be merely a parasite upon that organism. Or maybe I'm totally missing the intended meaning of this sentence? Either way it's clumsy. — coelacan talk — 05:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
- No, I think the parasite is a parasite. For example a crab may be invaded by a parasite which effectively castrates the crab, as a result of which the crab fattens up to the benfit of the invading parasite. So the fattened crab may be viewed as a phenotypic expression of the parastic genes. Maybe the sentence should read, ". . . advantageous not to the genes of the animal itself, but rather to the genes of a parasite which afflicts it." Or perhaps it should be re-written as it is a bit clumsy. By the way, the final chapter of the second edition of The Selfish Gene summarises this stuff, and is a lot easier to read than The Extended Phenotype itself! Laurence Boyce 19:11, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
