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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4

I volunteer to maintain this portal

Hey guys, I'm volunteering to maintain this portal. Just so you know my main area of expertise in biology is evolutionary biology, so if you see me tending to focus on evo bio to the exclusion of other disciplines, say something about it. I'll be maintaining this portal but that doesn't mean I don't need your help! Here are some things you can do to help me:

  • Locate good biology pictures. These may be good pictures of animals or living things, interesting pictures of microscopic life, or maybe just good diagrams of biological processes. Post links to the pictures in here (as well as your caption) and on my talk page. Or, if the highlighted picture is already several days stale, be bold and update the picture!
  • Locate good biology featured articles. For now we can work off of Wikipedia:Featured articles but at some point we're going to run out and it might become a bit more difficult to locate them. If you have any leads please post in here and on my talk page. It would help me a lot if you could write a short one or two paragraph summary for use in the portal infobox. Or, if the featured article is already several days stale, be bold and pick and link to a new one!
  • Update the "Did you know?" section with neato biology factoids. I'm sure there's a lot more out there than I could ever come up with, and it's kind of lame to just randomly browse biology-related articles hoping to find something useful.
  • Update the "Things you can do" section. I just blanked it because everything in it was several months out of date. As you run across biology articles that are, for whatever reason, of inferior quality, please link them in the section.
  • Contact me with any concerns or questions you may have at my talk page. I'm always open to suggestions or comments.

One more thing: I'm working on a system for preserving previous featured articles, highlighted pictures, and did you know factoids. Once I standardize a way to do this I'll post a how-to on here. This will be a good system because in the boxes on the portal page we can have a link that says, "View previous featured articles". It's much better than having to tangle with the edit history.

Thanks, and I look forward to looking forward with all of you on Portal:Biology! --Cyde Weys votetalk 03:55, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


Here's a little source for finding new pictures to use. I made a script that automatically generates an image gallery of all featured pictures on Wikipedia. You might want to check out the relevant nature section in my image gallery. --Cyde Weys votetalk 04:12, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Cyde,

I'm glad that someone is willing to maintain the biology portal. My only problem, is the "Highlighted Picture" area. This is probably very neccesary in subjects like Chemistry, where featured pictures are extremely lacking, but the current list of biology featured pictures is extremely large, and of high quality (mainly plants and animals). It has a new photo in it at least once a week, as it is most people's favourite photographic subject. If we run out of pictures, we could always start again, as it would take a long time to get through all the photos. Also, whenever a new photo is upgraded to featured status, it could get feature next on the portal.

I might also suggest only updating the portal once (or twice) a week. As it is quite a slow portal, it might be best to slowly update, so everyone can read the page once a week, and it is easier for you to update it (and spread out the time before you run out of featured articles). --liquidGhoul 14:34, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Alright, I'm aiming at updating the article and picture every Wednesday. I'll be updating the "Did you knows" more often than that, but I won't be entirely replacing them, so hopefully they'll "scroll off" the main Portal page in about the time of a week. The archive for those isn't done yet, but I'll work on that once it becomes time. --Cyde Weys votetalk 15:49, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


Cyde, thanks for your offer to manage this portal. I think the photosynthesis article is pretty good and could be featured. Jrbouldin 01:46, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Help

Moved from Talk: Evolution

Hey guys, I'm the current maintainer of Portal:Biology and since I figure I "hang" with you guys a lot, you could perhaps help me. Just check out the portal and comment on things you think should be changed (or make the changes yourself). I especially need some more "Did you knows". Also, I'm currently in the process of taking over Portal:Science, so if you want to help me with that too I'd be grateful. Note that I set the current Featured article on the science portal to evolution. Just trying to get some exposure for us! The Science Portal is important because it's linked from the top of the main page. Not a bad spot, eh? --Cyde Weys votetalk 02:57, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what to say here except I'm all about evidence and logic rather than politics. We all have our place so to speak... WAS 4.250 03:58, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

You're being cryptic again. Are you trying to say that portals are political? --Cyde Weys votetalk 04:05, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm refering to "Just trying to get some exposure for us!" WAS 4.250 07:20, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I actually wasn't trying to make it political. It's just the more exposure evolution gets the more (hopefully) good editors it gets for it and related topics. If you want to ascribe it to a base human appeal, I think celebrity is more appropriate than politics. Maybe I just want fame by being linked from the front page? --Cyde Weys votetalk 14:11, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

You have created a page that shows all featured images, which takes ages to load. Perhaps you could create a similar page for specifically biology related images, noting with each image whether it has previously been featured?
Did you know that Dolly the sheep was named for Dolly Parton, because she (the sheep) was cloned from a mammary cell?
Did you know that cattle and termites are among the few animals that can digest cellulose?
Did you know that HLA proteins help the immunesystem identify infected cells by presenting randomly selected cellular proteins to T-cells?
Did you know that spiders do not have compound eyes, but usually carry 8 individual eyes?
Did you know that bees will often head-butt intruders, and resort to stinging only as a last resort?
-- Ec5618 18:59, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
That's an impressive list of "did you know"s.
Did you know that cattle and termites are among the few animals that can digest cellulose?
Unfortunately, it is not animals but bacteria in the cattle gut that digest the cellulose, so that particular "did you know" is technically incorrect. - Samsara 19:20, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
The animals make use of the bacteria to digest the cellulose. The bacteria do the actual digesting, but the animals digest the bacterial waste products. Essentially, the bacteria are part of the animal digestive system. Still, if it's confusing, leave it out. -- Ec5618 19:32, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Is there any way the colour of the Biology Portal could be changed to something more natural?
Did you know the Sea Otter often keeps a stone tool in its armpit pouch?
Did you know that skunks cannot see objects further than three metres away, making them vulnerable to road traffic?
Did you know that crustaceans and mollusks have blue, copper based blood? -- Ec5618 15:56, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
The portal should be using css stylesheets, non? I could have a go at that. Also, does this discussion want to be moved over there and replaced by an appropriate link? - Samsara 16:09, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
The portal could be improved by upgrading it to the kinds of templates used at the likes of Portal:Science and Portal:Technology, which are more nicely put together. If you want to improve this portal in that manner please go for it! --Cyde Weys votetalk 04:26, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Improvement Drive

Frog has been nominated to be improved by WP:IDRIVE. Help us improve it and support Frog with your vote on WP:IDRIVE. --Fenice 07:53, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Science collaboration of the week

Chronospecies is a current candidate on Wikipedia:Science collaboration of the week. If you would like to see this article improved vote for it here. --Fenice 17:48, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Stable versions#Certification gang

would you like to create certified articles in science? -- Zondor 03:31, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Thinking out loud

Idea for the next article:


Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living nematode (a roundworm), about 1 mm in length, which lives in a temperate soil environment. Research into the molecular and developmental biology of C. elegans began in 1965 by Sydney Brenner (he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work). C. elegans has a male (very rare, makes up 0.05% of the C. elegans population) and hermaphrodite sex.

C. elegans is used as a model organism. Specimens are cheap and easy to maintain in the laboratory. C. elegans has been especially useful for studying cellular differentiation, and was the first multicellular organism to have its genome completely sequenced. From a research perspective, C. elegans has the advantage of being a multicellular eukaryotic organism which is simple enough to be studied in great detail. The developmental fate of every single somatic cell (959 in the adult hermaphrodite; 1031 in the adult male) has been mapped out. These patterns of cell lineage are largely invariant between individuals. In both sexes, a large number of additional cells (131 in the hermaphrodite, most of which would otherwise become neurons), are eliminated by programmed cell death (apoptosis).

Seconded. Samsara contrib talk 19:10, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Need more "Did you knows"

We could still use some more "Did you knows". If you have any, just go for it and add them. --Cyde Weys 21:17, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Isn't this mostly a matter of nicking them from the front page, e.g.
.
Samsara contrib talk 05:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
And here's one from Portal:Science
I also liked the rabbit one, but nobody else seemed to:
  • that rabbits and hares will re-digest first time feces (called cecotropes) to obtain the most from their plant diet.
Other weird ones from Mssrs. Lagomorphs:
  • the male's scrotum is in front of the penis;
  • the penis has no bone as does the rodents';
In fact, this penis bone is called baculum and is present in most mammals, excepting humans (and lagomorphs, obviously). Can someone corroborate that it is present in chimpanzees?

- Samsara contrib talk 02:34, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Pictures

Why don't you use featured pictures for the "selected pictures" section? There is currently 128 photos which would be suitable, I don't see a reason to dip into non-featured pictures yet. --liquidGhoul 08:47, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

The featured pictures are heavily biased in favor of vertebrates and butterflies. Frankly I didn't find anything especially interesting in it anymore and wanted instead to highlight some of the less thought about animals, such as squid. PZ Myers has some things to say about the vertebrate bias as well. --Cyde Weys 01:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

There were at least 20 invertebrates in the featured picture list. Granted most are insects, but since most invertebrates are, there is no problem there. Secondly, I have noticed there is a bias on your choice of "selected pictures" for animals. Why do you have to choose an animal when there are plenty of good plant photos available. It just doesn't make sense to me, that you have to choose a sub-par picture for the reason of variety, when you haven't nearly used a variety of images. You did not have to choose an aquatic invertebrate, and if you did, you could have used the antarctic krill eye image. --liquidGhoul 03:25, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Please, please, go ahead and pick the picture next week then. I just don't like being complained at for the way I did something when no one else was willing to do it. --Cyde Weys 04:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
I've put a reminder in the source to that effect. - Samsara contrib talk 04:21, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

OK--liquidGhoul 07:07, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Here are a few of my favourites from a brief and incomplete scan of Wikipedia:Featured_pictures#Nature:

The fairy wren is a popular model organism in the evolution of breeding systems due to its high promiscuity and resulting high levels of sperm competition. liquidGhoul contributed the picture. - Samsara contrib talk 23:32, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any featured pics of bacteria. Grave omission! Bacterial colonies can actually look very visually appealing, and are phenotypically extremely diverse! - Samsara contrib talk 23:39, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, my eyes!

Can we do something about the glaring cyan headers and photo? Back in the day when I was doing webdesign, these were colours we were warned about using; almost on a par with bright magenta... SOC (Save our cones). - Samsara contrib talk 14:39, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

How about a deeper shade of blue? Water, after all, is the basis of all life! - Samsara contrib talk 19:04, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, I've suggested a colour palette here. Please be clear on the fact that I suggest we pick ONE of the possibilities, not do patchwork! If there's no objections filed here within the next three days or so, I'll go ahead with putting one of these into practice to see if it gets reverted. The main decision to be made would be whether to stick with the white writing. If we do, the background should probably become a little darker. My current favourite is the colour scheme of the "selected picture" box on my example page, although it could be a bit bluer, as in the bottom example of the left hand column. - Samsara contrib talk 19:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

While you guys are at it how about fixing up the portal to use the box-header templates? It would make the page a lot more cleaner. --Cyde Weys 01:45, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

What do you say now? ;) - Samsara contrib talk 03:21, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

New colour scheme

So here is my current suggestion for a new colour scheme. - Samsara contrib talk 03:37, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of using green for biology. How about HEX:339966 ? I don't know how to change the colours though, sorry. --liquidGhoul 03:50, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
You can change the colour here. Your suggestion is in the history: [1]. Just edit and save and return to the main page to see the changes (after refresh, obviously). I still prefer my suggestion and think that it might even be worth explaining the colour, e.g. blue because all known life depends intimately on the peculiar chemistry of water. - Samsara contrib talk 03:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Ohhhhh, now I like your idea. Except that it is purple. :) --liquidGhoul 03:59, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Maybe it's your screen? ;) But seriously, I've just raised the green value by hex 11, so it should come out looking less purple. What do you think? - Samsara contrib talk 04:13, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Much better, I like it. --liquidGhoul 07:08, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Human genome is Science Collaboration of the Week

Just to let you know that Human genome has been voted Science Collaboration of the Week. - Samsara contrib talk 10:45, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

non-biologist needs help!

Hi, the main page currently contains a link to the 2006 Table Mountain fire (under the news items), which according to this source has destroyed between 40 and 50 percent of the world's silver leaf tree population. This fact is noted in the fire article and thus it contains a link to the silver leaf tree article (which I created). Unfortunately, my knowledge of trees is VERY limited so the article in its current for is an unsatisfactory stub. Given that the article is only 2 links deep from the main page I think it needs to be expanded... Help will be much appreciated. Mikkerpikker ... 23:56, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm thinking a Featured/Selected Biography would be a good addition. This way there are two main content areas on the portal. I think a lot of people know a lot more about biological topics in general than biologists of the past. For biographies I'm thinking along the lines of Louis Pasteur, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, etc. There's a whole lot more of 'em I learned about way back in high school Biology. I'll have to dig up the names from somewhere. But I think we can definitely go very far with this. What do you guys think? --Cyde Weys 19:03, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

For an example of what I'm talking about please see Portal:Science. I added a featured biography there not too long ago. --Cyde Weys 19:04, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Evolution: Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Thomas Huxley, Ronald Aylmer Fisher, Sewall Wright, JBS Haldane, Ernst Mayr, August Weismann, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Hermann Joseph Muller, Thomas Hunt Morgan.
Others: Carolus Linnaeus, Niko Tinbergen, Julian Huxley, James Watson, Francis Crick, Lynn Margulis, Rosalind Franklin, Barbara McClintock, Jane Goodall
All of these have decent articles written about them - Samsara 23:01, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Plus Camillo Golgi, Theodor Schwann, Gregor Mendel (obviously), Ernst Haeckel, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Robert Koch, and C. H. Waddington (once I've worked on it a bit more).
Thomas Malthus would also count as a biologist, as would John Forbes Nash. Other important contributions to biology and game theory were made by John Maynard Smith.
How exactly is John Forbes Nash is biologist???? Goldfinger820
Nash equilibrium. See also evolutionarily stable strategy. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 11:37, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
rather dubious - a last resort if we run out of people to bio perhaps Goldfinger820
Quite the contrary - I think it would be very interesting to point out the links between biology and other disciplines. We featured Malthus for the same reason. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 23:46, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Francis Galton. I'll be back with more. - Samsara contrib talk 23:55, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Carl Djerassi, Peter Medawar, Matthew Meselson. - Samsara contrib talk 00:39, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Sydney Brenner. - Samsara contrib talk 00:41, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Kary Mullis, François Jacob, Jacques Monod.
One of my concerns would be that some of these ladies and chaps don't have well written articles, although sometimes their discoveries are fairly well described in separate articles - maybe it would make sense to call the section "history of biology" rather than "featured biography"?
You can probably find quite a few eligible people by simply browsing Nobel laureates, fellows of the Royal Society and National Academy of Sciences, etc. There are still a few out there whose names I've not been able to recall. - Samsara contrib talk 00:47, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Louis Agassiz - Samsara (talk • contribs) 09:57, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Richard Dawkins - He surely deserves a spot here. ~Carnivora

Frog vs. cold war in WP:AID

Anyone that hasn't voted yet feel like giving frog the edge over the cold war? Vote at Wikipedia:Article improvement drive! - Samsara contrib talk 20:22, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I think good pics of horseshoe crab and coelacanth should be used on this portal, as they organisms much more unusual than the typical species we feature. The only problem is Wikipedia doesn't seem to have good pics of these. Can anyone assist in finding some compatibly-licensed images online? --Cyde Weys 05:49, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Amphisbaenia, Caecilian, Tuatara. - Samsara contrib talk 10:55, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
I will be moving near the beach in about a month, and it is really well known for its crabs (unfortunately not horseshoe crabs, but I find them all fascinating), so I may be able to get some good photos of crabs in the future (probably be a while though). I agree with Samsara, in that we really need a good caecilian photo. I cannot just go out and take one, as frogs are the only amphibians in Aus, but I really hope someone will soon. User:Dawson uploaded a photo of one recently, and I was ecstatic about it, however it was far from feature status. Maybe we should create a section, where we request high quality photos of certain things. It would be a good insentive for people to go out photographing, as the current list of requested photos are very hard to get. The high quality photos may be of things which are common in an area, but most people just do not have the access to them. --liquidGhoul 11:12, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
And while we're onto the strange and cheerful (or to complete the legless theme), I should mention the slowworms. No legless mammal has yet evolved, to the best of my knowledge. The mole is the closest I am familiar with, and various variations on the theme (Naked Mole Rat, Golden mole, Marsupial mole). Presumably the limited number of vertebrae in mammals is prohibitive of wormlike locomotion? (Speculation/original research, I suppose...) - Samsara contrib talk 12:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Either this article, or the lead picture from it, could be used: Alternation of generations. It is similar to the current Portal:Biology FP, but illustrates a different aspect and could be used some time from now.
Samsara (talk • contribs) 17:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Scientific peer review

A scientific peer review has been started and we're looking for Wikipedians who are members of the scientific academic community to run for the board. If you want to give it a shot come over and post a little about yourself. New nominations are being accepted until the 00:00 on the 17th March.

The project aims to combine existing peer review mechanisms (Wikipedia peer review, featured article candidate discussion, article assessment, &c.) which focus on compliance to manual of style and referencing policy with a more conventional peer review by members of the scientific academic community. It is hoped that this will raise science-based articles to their highest possible standards. Article quality and factual validity is now Wikipedia's most important goal. Having as many errors as Britannica is not good–we must raise our standards above this. --Oldak Quill 18:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Upcoming pics

I'm just finding cool stuff on WP:FAC. --Cyde Weys 21:03, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I was just came here to say something similar. Finally some invertebrates are coming through FPC. We will also have a snail promoted in the next week (I've added it to the gallery). --liquidGhoul 09:40, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and another from FPC. This one is brilliant! It won't be promoted for over a week. --liquidGhoul 22:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

That last fly one is already in queue to be next week's featured pic. --Cyde Weys 22:28, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

More copulation:

Samsara (talk • contribs) 18:00, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

A black slug, Arion ater L., on a rock, with its pneumostome clearly visible.

What do you guys feel about this slug image - it was not promoted at a count 8 support, 5 oppose. Worth renom?

Samsara (talk • contribs) 18:07, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

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