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Tree of life (biology) article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
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What is talked about in that article is not exactly new and is already included in the "Tree of life today" section. Do you feel that horizontal gene transfer could be somehow better discussed in this article? If so what do you feel should be included? 203.213.71.221 ( talk) 03:45, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
This article also needs a "controversy" section with 2 subsections. There is a contemporary scientific controversy in which scientists such as Ford Doolittle dispute that we ought to be invoking a tree of life given that actually evolutionary history is (to a degree that is debate-able) non-tree-like due to processes such as lateral transfer. This was referenced in a comment several years ago that cites a Guardian article:
There is also a minor dispute about the role of Darwin in the development of the concept that we now know as "the tree of life". Scholarship weighs on the side that Darwin did not invent the metaphor, but the idea of attributing this to Darwin just keeps popping up due to a constant stream of newcomers who think Darwin was there first because they have read Darwin but not Lamarck or other sources (e.g., this is implied in the Guardian article cited above) Dabs ( talk) 15:37, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
the images are not appropriate. They are history of science, not science. Can someone please get a decent image and post it. Andrewjlockley ( talk) 21:05, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
How did you get away with uploading an image with 'Thor and Loki' as Eukaryotes? Can someone find a new picture? (2018) LMAO
While I understand the motivation to promote the modern diagram to the lead (per "Images" above), I think the old version (12 April) worked better. The current lead points out that the "Tree of Life" concept was originated by Darwin, so it is entirely appropriate for the lead to feature Darwin's tree. It's true that someone who never reads past the lead, and who doesn't read the image caption (with its 1859 date) might be misled about current practice, but such a reader is not going to find the new lead very enlightening.
I am in favor of restoring the old version of the article, where the modern TOL diagram was associated with the corresponding text.
As a bonus for anyone interested, I'll recommend this texscience report (News of the Death of the Tree of Life Has Been Greatly Exaggerated) that has some great info and diagrams. It's perhaps a bit focused on a particular news event for "external links", but perhaps it could be added? Johnuniq ( talk) 09:11, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
The original I edited was, in my view, too definite in describing the current position; I've added some qualifications. Hopefully there will be a consensus view soon and we can settle this section... Peter coxhead ( talk) 18:52, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Please see File talk:Darwin tree of life.jpg (the image is used in this article, but the other one mentioned on that talk page might be considered a better version). - dcljr ( talk) 07:29, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't see the logic behind the statement that Hitchcock's tree diagrams "were not real evolutionary trees, because Hitchcock believed that a deity was the agent of change." Lots of people believe in the evolution of species from a common ancestor while also believing that a deity is controlling or influencing the process. "Biological evolution" is not synonymous with "Biological evolution by non-teleological natural selection." 206.208.105.129 ( talk) 20:37, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
There is a substantive question about the scope of this article. This page is titled "Tree of Life (biology)", whereas "tree of life" is also used, for instance, as a reference to the tree of knowledge in the garden of eden (Christian bible). This is why there is a disambiguation page for "tree of life".
There has been some disagreement about this on the talk page, with some folks complaining that the historical material is inappropriate. I'm not going to take a position on that, but I think the article needs to be more clear, using consistent language and section headings.
I'm going to put this in the form of some questions for those who are interested in offering an opinion.
As a scientist indirectly involved with the "tree of life" project, I can attest that contemporary usage is roughly as follows. THE tree of life is a hypothetically comprehensive tree, covering all the millions of species that exist. Some people want to include extinct species as well (the tree of all things that have lived). Any attempt to produce a broad or comprehensive phylogeny qualifies as *A* tree of life. Woese's rRNA tree with 3 "urkingdoms" (later called "domains"), or the ToLWeb tree, are trees of life. The number of published trees of life is not huge. Haeckel's tree is a tree of life.
However, that meaning only became common since about ~2000 AD as the result of NSF's "assembling the tree of life" project. Before that, the tree of life might have referred to a taxonomic tree, i.e., a hierarchy of relationships of similarity without any explicit assumption that the relationships are evolutionary. And even before that, people were using "tree of life" as a metaphor to refer to the connectedness of life, without necessarily thinking about hierarchy in the way that we do today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dabs ( talk • contribs) 15:49, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
The first sentence, "The Tree of Life is a metaphor proposed by Charles Darwin to express the concept of phylogeny" is wildly incorrect. First, Darwin did not propose the metaphor "tree of life". This phrase had existed for centuries as a reference to the biotic world (and also as a reference to the biblical tree of knowledge of life and death). Second, while Darwin used the expression "tree of life" 1 time in the Origin of Species, he did not use it to refer to a phylogeny.
These two points are explained in the following article:
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001096#s4
Penny (above article) explains that Darwin's reference to "tree of life" is not a reference to phylogeny, so the section quoting this passage from Darwin is not relevant to this article. I'm going to delete it.
Third, regardless of whether one calls it a "tree of life", Darwin did not invent the use of a branching diagram to unite all of life into a branching (hierarchical) classification. Many others had done that. Fourth, Darwin did not invent the use of a branching diagram to represent a historical process, i.e., *evolutionary* relationships of organisms. Lamarck thought of this before Darwin was born-- it appeared in his 1809 Philosophie Zoologique. These points are easily verified and are mentioned in the following article:
http://roughguidetoevolution.blogspot.com/2009/08/lamarck-darwin-and-tree-of-life.html
On this basis I'm going to delete the misattribution of "tree of life" to Darwin, and delete the section on the diagram that appears in the Origin of Species. This is not relevant because it is not a broad tree of actual species (a tree of life in the modern scientific sense of the term) but a diagram of a hypothetical process. That is, while Lamarck referred to branches with actual groups of organisms, Darwin's diagrams (in his notebook and his OOS) is a purely hypothetical process diagram, which is why the entities are labeled with numbers or letters. Haeckel's tree fits in this article because it purports to show the evolutionary relationships of the known biological world, whereas Darwin's diagram is intended to illustrate a hypothetical process and is not a tree of life in the sense in which this article clearly intends. Dabs ( talk) 15:06, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
I have now amended the article in the following way:
I hope this approach finds consensus. Peter coxhead ( talk) 10:23, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
In the year 1837, Darwin entered his sketch into his notebook. But since when is the copy of that sketch available to the public? What is the first publishing date e.g. of a facsimile in a magazin or some other prined publication? Did Darwin himself show it (or a facsimile) to the public?
The image is very popular, but I don't find the publishing date given together with any reproduction of that sketch. It woud be interesting to specify that date in the article -- DL5MDA ( talk) 18:44, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: Boca Jóvenes ( talk · contribs) 14:04, 1 November 2022 (UTC)
I'll review this. Looks as if it's been waiting a long time. Hope to be back soon. BoJó | talk UTC 14:04, 1 November 2022 (UTC)
This passes very easily. It is well-written, educational and interesting. The sourcing and citations are fine; the illustrations are appropriate and useful to the reader; the coverage is within scope and, though I'm by no means an expert on the subject, I'd say the article is complete. The only things I could think of that might help the reader a bit were two subject links I've added (embryology and paleontology). It might be worth checking to see if there are other terms where a link might help but, really, it would just be fine-tuning. This is not so much a good article as an excellent article and I'm promoting it to WP:GA. Congratulations and well done. BoJó | talk UTC 14:29, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
The result was: promoted by
Cielquiparle (
talk) 14:10, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
Improved to Good Article status by Chiswick Chap ( talk). Nominated by Onegreatjoke ( talk) at 14:21, 5 November 2022 (UTC).
General: Article is new enough and long enough |
---|
Policy compliance:
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation |
---|
|
QPQ: Done. |
Overall:
First thing first: Earwig is giving me an...
interesting copyvio score. Rightfully so - we have a very large Darwin quote that takes up 60% of my screen. Since Origin is in the public domain, the article should indicate that it incorporates much of its text from public domain sources.
Template:Source-attribution helps with this. With regards to neutrality, I am not seeing any
WP:DUE or
WP:FRINGE red flags, which is good for something closely related to a controversial topic like evolution. Would like to stress, however, that I don't have any expertise on biology, so anyone who does is welcome to provide their second opinion on the article here.
Furthermore, the hook seems run-of-the-mill - I would suggest making the hook about Darwin's seminal work as his name is more well-known to a general audience. Something like ... that
Charles Darwin conceptualized his theory of evolution using a "
tree of life" model?
would be good. Another optional suggestion would be to incorporate an image there and bam, more readers hooked.
Your Power 🐍 💬 "
What did I tell you?"
📝 "
Don't get complacent..." 13:15, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
|loc=
comment. Not sure if this is exactly what the reviewer wanted. –
Reidgreg (
talk) 15:45, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
The text "have the ability to transfer genetic information between unrelated organisms through horizontal gene transfer" is inaccurate: horizontal gene transfer occurs all the time between all sorts of organisms. Maybe "tends more than most organisms"? 120.18.115.178 ( talk) 06:34, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Tree of life (biology) article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | Tree of life (biology) has been listed as one of the
Natural sciences good articles under the
good article criteria. If you can improve it further,
please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can
reassess it. Review: November 2, 2022. ( Reviewed version). |
![]() | This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
![]() | A fact from Tree of life (biology) appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 19 February 2023 (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
| ![]() |
![]() | This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
What is talked about in that article is not exactly new and is already included in the "Tree of life today" section. Do you feel that horizontal gene transfer could be somehow better discussed in this article? If so what do you feel should be included? 203.213.71.221 ( talk) 03:45, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
This article also needs a "controversy" section with 2 subsections. There is a contemporary scientific controversy in which scientists such as Ford Doolittle dispute that we ought to be invoking a tree of life given that actually evolutionary history is (to a degree that is debate-able) non-tree-like due to processes such as lateral transfer. This was referenced in a comment several years ago that cites a Guardian article:
There is also a minor dispute about the role of Darwin in the development of the concept that we now know as "the tree of life". Scholarship weighs on the side that Darwin did not invent the metaphor, but the idea of attributing this to Darwin just keeps popping up due to a constant stream of newcomers who think Darwin was there first because they have read Darwin but not Lamarck or other sources (e.g., this is implied in the Guardian article cited above) Dabs ( talk) 15:37, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
the images are not appropriate. They are history of science, not science. Can someone please get a decent image and post it. Andrewjlockley ( talk) 21:05, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
How did you get away with uploading an image with 'Thor and Loki' as Eukaryotes? Can someone find a new picture? (2018) LMAO
While I understand the motivation to promote the modern diagram to the lead (per "Images" above), I think the old version (12 April) worked better. The current lead points out that the "Tree of Life" concept was originated by Darwin, so it is entirely appropriate for the lead to feature Darwin's tree. It's true that someone who never reads past the lead, and who doesn't read the image caption (with its 1859 date) might be misled about current practice, but such a reader is not going to find the new lead very enlightening.
I am in favor of restoring the old version of the article, where the modern TOL diagram was associated with the corresponding text.
As a bonus for anyone interested, I'll recommend this texscience report (News of the Death of the Tree of Life Has Been Greatly Exaggerated) that has some great info and diagrams. It's perhaps a bit focused on a particular news event for "external links", but perhaps it could be added? Johnuniq ( talk) 09:11, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
The original I edited was, in my view, too definite in describing the current position; I've added some qualifications. Hopefully there will be a consensus view soon and we can settle this section... Peter coxhead ( talk) 18:52, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Please see File talk:Darwin tree of life.jpg (the image is used in this article, but the other one mentioned on that talk page might be considered a better version). - dcljr ( talk) 07:29, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't see the logic behind the statement that Hitchcock's tree diagrams "were not real evolutionary trees, because Hitchcock believed that a deity was the agent of change." Lots of people believe in the evolution of species from a common ancestor while also believing that a deity is controlling or influencing the process. "Biological evolution" is not synonymous with "Biological evolution by non-teleological natural selection." 206.208.105.129 ( talk) 20:37, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
There is a substantive question about the scope of this article. This page is titled "Tree of Life (biology)", whereas "tree of life" is also used, for instance, as a reference to the tree of knowledge in the garden of eden (Christian bible). This is why there is a disambiguation page for "tree of life".
There has been some disagreement about this on the talk page, with some folks complaining that the historical material is inappropriate. I'm not going to take a position on that, but I think the article needs to be more clear, using consistent language and section headings.
I'm going to put this in the form of some questions for those who are interested in offering an opinion.
As a scientist indirectly involved with the "tree of life" project, I can attest that contemporary usage is roughly as follows. THE tree of life is a hypothetically comprehensive tree, covering all the millions of species that exist. Some people want to include extinct species as well (the tree of all things that have lived). Any attempt to produce a broad or comprehensive phylogeny qualifies as *A* tree of life. Woese's rRNA tree with 3 "urkingdoms" (later called "domains"), or the ToLWeb tree, are trees of life. The number of published trees of life is not huge. Haeckel's tree is a tree of life.
However, that meaning only became common since about ~2000 AD as the result of NSF's "assembling the tree of life" project. Before that, the tree of life might have referred to a taxonomic tree, i.e., a hierarchy of relationships of similarity without any explicit assumption that the relationships are evolutionary. And even before that, people were using "tree of life" as a metaphor to refer to the connectedness of life, without necessarily thinking about hierarchy in the way that we do today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dabs ( talk • contribs) 15:49, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
The first sentence, "The Tree of Life is a metaphor proposed by Charles Darwin to express the concept of phylogeny" is wildly incorrect. First, Darwin did not propose the metaphor "tree of life". This phrase had existed for centuries as a reference to the biotic world (and also as a reference to the biblical tree of knowledge of life and death). Second, while Darwin used the expression "tree of life" 1 time in the Origin of Species, he did not use it to refer to a phylogeny.
These two points are explained in the following article:
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001096#s4
Penny (above article) explains that Darwin's reference to "tree of life" is not a reference to phylogeny, so the section quoting this passage from Darwin is not relevant to this article. I'm going to delete it.
Third, regardless of whether one calls it a "tree of life", Darwin did not invent the use of a branching diagram to unite all of life into a branching (hierarchical) classification. Many others had done that. Fourth, Darwin did not invent the use of a branching diagram to represent a historical process, i.e., *evolutionary* relationships of organisms. Lamarck thought of this before Darwin was born-- it appeared in his 1809 Philosophie Zoologique. These points are easily verified and are mentioned in the following article:
http://roughguidetoevolution.blogspot.com/2009/08/lamarck-darwin-and-tree-of-life.html
On this basis I'm going to delete the misattribution of "tree of life" to Darwin, and delete the section on the diagram that appears in the Origin of Species. This is not relevant because it is not a broad tree of actual species (a tree of life in the modern scientific sense of the term) but a diagram of a hypothetical process. That is, while Lamarck referred to branches with actual groups of organisms, Darwin's diagrams (in his notebook and his OOS) is a purely hypothetical process diagram, which is why the entities are labeled with numbers or letters. Haeckel's tree fits in this article because it purports to show the evolutionary relationships of the known biological world, whereas Darwin's diagram is intended to illustrate a hypothetical process and is not a tree of life in the sense in which this article clearly intends. Dabs ( talk) 15:06, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
I have now amended the article in the following way:
I hope this approach finds consensus. Peter coxhead ( talk) 10:23, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
In the year 1837, Darwin entered his sketch into his notebook. But since when is the copy of that sketch available to the public? What is the first publishing date e.g. of a facsimile in a magazin or some other prined publication? Did Darwin himself show it (or a facsimile) to the public?
The image is very popular, but I don't find the publishing date given together with any reproduction of that sketch. It woud be interesting to specify that date in the article -- DL5MDA ( talk) 18:44, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: Boca Jóvenes ( talk · contribs) 14:04, 1 November 2022 (UTC)
I'll review this. Looks as if it's been waiting a long time. Hope to be back soon. BoJó | talk UTC 14:04, 1 November 2022 (UTC)
This passes very easily. It is well-written, educational and interesting. The sourcing and citations are fine; the illustrations are appropriate and useful to the reader; the coverage is within scope and, though I'm by no means an expert on the subject, I'd say the article is complete. The only things I could think of that might help the reader a bit were two subject links I've added (embryology and paleontology). It might be worth checking to see if there are other terms where a link might help but, really, it would just be fine-tuning. This is not so much a good article as an excellent article and I'm promoting it to WP:GA. Congratulations and well done. BoJó | talk UTC 14:29, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
The result was: promoted by
Cielquiparle (
talk) 14:10, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
Improved to Good Article status by Chiswick Chap ( talk). Nominated by Onegreatjoke ( talk) at 14:21, 5 November 2022 (UTC).
General: Article is new enough and long enough |
---|
Policy compliance:
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation |
---|
|
QPQ: Done. |
Overall:
First thing first: Earwig is giving me an...
interesting copyvio score. Rightfully so - we have a very large Darwin quote that takes up 60% of my screen. Since Origin is in the public domain, the article should indicate that it incorporates much of its text from public domain sources.
Template:Source-attribution helps with this. With regards to neutrality, I am not seeing any
WP:DUE or
WP:FRINGE red flags, which is good for something closely related to a controversial topic like evolution. Would like to stress, however, that I don't have any expertise on biology, so anyone who does is welcome to provide their second opinion on the article here.
Furthermore, the hook seems run-of-the-mill - I would suggest making the hook about Darwin's seminal work as his name is more well-known to a general audience. Something like ... that
Charles Darwin conceptualized his theory of evolution using a "
tree of life" model?
would be good. Another optional suggestion would be to incorporate an image there and bam, more readers hooked.
Your Power 🐍 💬 "
What did I tell you?"
📝 "
Don't get complacent..." 13:15, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
|loc=
comment. Not sure if this is exactly what the reviewer wanted. –
Reidgreg (
talk) 15:45, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
The text "have the ability to transfer genetic information between unrelated organisms through horizontal gene transfer" is inaccurate: horizontal gene transfer occurs all the time between all sorts of organisms. Maybe "tends more than most organisms"? 120.18.115.178 ( talk) 06:34, 7 October 2023 (UTC)