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Talk:Subfossil lemur

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Maky (talk | contribs) at 22:47, 4 July 2010 (GAC nomination). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Article creation and upcoming expansion

Due to unintended delays, I decided to publish this article prematurely just to fill the unnecessary void. (Also, by putting it in the mainspace, maybe that will light a fire under my butt to finish it.) In its current "1.0" state, it could use a serious proofread and copy-edit. I will try to do that myself immediately following this post, but at some point I need to call it a night. In general, I prefer that others proofread my work anyway, since I'm not good at catching my own mistakes. A quick class assessment would be greatly appreciated. Once the article is finished, I will obviously push it through WP:GAC followed by WP:FAC. Over the coming week or two, I plan to work on the article, hopefully finishing the last two sections. The "Extinction" section, in particular, is expected to grow significantly. Anyone looking at the source will see the hidden references I intend to use, so please do not delete them. Otherwise, enjoy the article and feel free to ask questions. – VisionHolder « talk » 04:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I should also note that I am trying to avoid using any life restoration images that have not been approved by subfossil lemur expert, Dr. Laurie Godfrey. I have been working with her and two skill Wiki artists, Smokeybjb and FunkMonk, to create more. As additional "approved" images become available, they will be included on this page. – VisionHolder « talk » 05:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • Lead: "ranging as high as 20 or more species"—better to give the actual maximum
This is all the source says. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The lead should have something about the history of research (the proliferation of names and papers around 1900, the silence of subfossil lemur research after WW II, and recent renaissance), and about why they went extinct, but that should perhaps wait till the relevant sections have been written.
That's exactly why I haven't added that information. The sections are almost done, and I will add the content to lead at that point. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "striped possums"—the link goes to the species Dactylopsila trivirgata and therefore should be capitalized, unless you actually mean the genus Dactylopsila.
The source just says "striped possums", so I'm not sure if it's just that species or the entire genus. The wiki articles on the other species are one-sentence stubs. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "gallery forests that surviving lemur species are most often studied in."—not "found in"?
The source says "studied in", meaning they lived in a wide array of habitats than the lemurs we've studied to date. Or I think that's what the source means. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at the source, and the relevance of the quote seems questionable: they're really saying that living lemurs occur in different habitats, and subfossil lemurs probably did too. Also, they're talking about the assemblage in a specific place, not about subfossil lemurs in general. Ucucha 19:27, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed the sentence per your reinterpretation. I think I may have taken a quote out of context. – VisionHolder « talk » 21:53, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "not all habitats in which they occurred would have allowed them to be strictly arboreal, including gallery forests and the spiny forests of southern Madagascar."—not clear what the "including" refers to here.
Fixed, I hope. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Yet despite this pressure to specialize and differentiate, some of the extinct subfossil lemurs, such as Archaeolemur, had island-wide distributions during the Holocene, unlike the living lemurs"—wouldn't the appropriate comparison here be the genus for living lemurs? Various extant genera do have virtually island-wide distributions.
I'm going by the source. Unfortunately, I haven't made a range map for Archaeolemur yet, and I'm not sure how distributed the two species were. Today, though, I don't know of a single two-species genus that has an island-wide distribution, unless you count sifakas as two species with many subspecies (like Tattersall does). – VisionHolder « talk » 20:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Subfossil lemur diets have been reconstructed using analytical tools, including dental gross morphology, shearing quotients, microwear, mesowear, dental microstructure, biogeochemistry, and the dissection of fecal pellets associated with subfossil remains"—as I told you, I think you should explain what this all means. I'll say what I think they refer to, but am not familiar with all of them. "Dental gross morphology" is just the way the tooth generally look—crest arrangement etcetera. "Shearing quotients" might be something related to hypsodonty (high-crownedness). "Microwear" and "mesowear" look at the way the tooth is worn on a microscopic level; I'm not sure what the difference between the two is. "Dental microstructure" looks at the microscopic arrangement of the tooth enamel, with things like Hunter-Schreger bands. "Biogeochemistry" may be isotopic analysis, like C-13 levels.
I've removed the list of dental terms and simplified, hiding the full text for now. Thanks for the suggestions, especially for "biogeochemistry." – VisionHolder « talk » 20:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I think I may have been wrong on "biogeochemistry", and the article on the discipline provides a different explanation. Ucucha 19:27, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Given that the biogeochemistry is used to determine what types of plants the lemurs ate (by looking at isotope levels), I'm going to stick with your initial suggestion, if that's alright. – VisionHolder « talk » 21:53, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've got an introduction to mesowear and microwear from someone who does know about it. Microwear is looking at the occlusal surface of teeth under a microscope and noting the scratches and holes and little things in the surface. Mesowear looks at the sides of the teeth, at the cusp profiles. When an animal eats hard (abrasive) food, it gets blunt, low cusps, but when it eats soft food, it gets higher, sharper cusps. Ucucha 10:30, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • You link "niche differentiation" twice in the "Ecology" section, once piped to "resource partitioning".
Fixed. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The piece about seed dispersal makes me wonder how those plants that depended on subfossil lemurs survive now.
Nothing is said in the literature. One thing that is noted in the article is that genetic diversity of some species is narrowing regionally since seeds mostly just fall near the parent. In my personal opinion, I suspect other lemurs eat the fruits, but don't carry them as far. (Instead of carrying them in their gut, the carry the fruit in their mouth a short distance, eat the meat, and then drop the seed. Also, introduced animals may eat fallen fruit and humans may also act as dispersers to a limited extent. But, again, I haven't seen anything in the literature. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Aren't the nuts of many of those plants too big for living lemurs to eat? Ucucha 19:27, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Admittedly, I'm not familiar with the fruits of those specific species. If the seed has a mesocarp that the lemur will consume, they'll carry it. I don't know if some of those seed require passing through an animal's gut to germinate. A lot of times, it just helps with germination, but isn't a requirement. Maybe some species just require fire to germinate?? If I happen upon a source that answers these questions in more detail, I'll add it to the article. As it stands, the information that's included is only applicable to the arid southwest and not the entire island. – VisionHolder « talk » 22:00, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Most subfossil lemurs also had high retinal summation (sensitivity to low light), resulting in poor day vision (low visual acuity) compared to anthropoids."—what is the evidence for this?
This may get very technical... but I'll try to add it shortly. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Added. If I go into any more detail, I'm going to be explaining the OFI (the Optical Foramen Index) and lots of complicated ratios. I hope this is okay. – VisionHolder « talk » 22:17, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ucucha 06:26, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a little torn between addressing these and writing the rest of the article. At the moment, I think I'm going to work on writing more material and will come back later to address these issues. – VisionHolder « talk » 14:48, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Do what you think best; there's no hurry. Ucucha 14:50, 12 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It took me a while, but I made some changes and wrote some replies. Don't bother with a new review yet until I'm done with the article... which hopefully will be Sunday or Monday. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Timeline

I finally finished writing the article, although I would still like to add a timeline based on "Table 1" from Burney 2004. I might try creating it as a SVG file sometime soon, although if someone is skilled at using EasyTimeline, I would gladly explain what I would like to see. – VisionHolder « talk » 22:41, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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