Talk:Marco Polo sheep/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Sasata (talk) 00:59, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I'll be reviewing this article. To save us both time, I'll boldly correct any minor things I see during my review (although feel free to revert or discuss the edits if you don't agree with them), and bring up other points here. I expect to be ready with an initial set of comments in a couple of days. Sasata (talk) 00:59, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

That'll work fine, Sasata, thanks for getting on to this so quickly! I Look forward to seeing what we can do with this.  :-] Fleetflame 02:50, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok here's an initial set of comments. I'll give you some time to respond and check later. Still have to check references. Sasata (talk)

Lead *"The Marco Polo sheep (Ovis ammon polii) is a subspecies of argali sheep, named after Marco Polo, from the mountainous regions of Central Asia." Sentence needs to be recast, currently reads like Mr. Polo was from Asia. *"Research has also been carried out into possible agricultural uses." That sentence leaves me hanging. Aren't sheep normally used in agriculture?

• Lead is generally thin. Please add flesh.

Etymology *Ovis ammon polii what does polli mean/derive from? *"Altai argali are the largest of all sheep." This is misplaced in this section. I would expect to find this maybe in the Characteristics section, along with some numbers to demonstrate how large they are.

Characteristics *"The sheep is particularly known for its long, spiraling horns which have been measured with a span up to 140 cm" I've never measured with a span, usually I use a tape measure; reword. *Missing information: how long does the hair get? describe the color patterns more completely, e.g. are the dark and light areas visible on the male in the taxobox pic characteristic of all males, or is coloring variable? Does it change color with the seasons? How long do the female horns get? How long does it take for them to grow the horns (I'm assuming males aren't born like that)? It looks like the female has a stripe of hair down the middle of her back... not mentioned anywhere. Do they have little stubs for tails? What's the average birth size and weight? When do these animals rut? C'mon, details!

• "Mature rams on average weigh 126 kg (280 lb)[10] and ewes weigh 76 kg (170 lb)." Why is the citation in that specific position? Does that mean the last half of the sentence is uncited?
• Why no mention and explanation of the "horn exfoliation" phenomenon, where males lose the distal portion of the horn and leave smooth-surfaced stumps?

*Do these things suffer from common parasitic diseases?

• What do they eat??

Habitat

• the range is so small that it practically begs for a distribution map in the taxobox... is this possible?

*"This region typically has severely cold winds and arid climatic conditions." I'm from Canada, so I probably have a different idea of "severely cold", possibly average low/high temps for the region could be provided? *"The subspecies lives mainly in the northwestern part..." Is there more than just the one subspecies (Ovis ammon polii)? Please clarify. :Ok I did a little looking myself and see there are a number of subspecies. What is the taxonomic criteria for separating subspecies? Why aren't they all listed and described in this article?

Conservation

• "... half [of] what Ronald Petocz estimated in his 1973 tour." Who? What tour? More details please ...
• "...recently launching a campaign to save the species." Avoid using "recently", just use a year

I haven't taken the time to look through everything so far, but just a few responses to some comments:

• I disagree that the sentence in the lead sounds like Polo is from asia, but no matter: it can be changed.

I just thought it was slightly ambiguous, and could be read in two ways. Sasata (talk) 16:44, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

• The size of Altai argali is there because that's the only place in the article they're mentioned.
• "Mature rams on average weigh 126 kg (280 lb)[10] and ewes weigh 76 kg (170 lb)." I didn't notice that the second half didn't have a ref - that reference doesn't mention the ewe's weight, so yes it only applies to the first half - I'll need to ref the second.
• I'm not sure what you mean by "horn exfoliation" and I don't think I've ever seen that it happens to them

Check out this paper: Petocz RG, Shank CC. (1983). "Horn Exfoliation in Marco Polo Sheep, Ovis ammon poli, in the Afghan Pamir". Journal of Mammalogy 64(1):136-38. If you can't get a hold of it, let me know and I can put in a blurb in the article. Sasata (talk) 16:44, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

• On the talk page we've discussed a map....it doesn't look promising
• You're asking about other subspecies?! That's what the Etymology section is there for! Also, they aren't all listed because this is an article about Ovis ammon polii, not Ovis ammon.

Yup. my bad. Sasata (talk) 16:44, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

• I expect a lot of work will need to be done to the conservation section - this was nommed for GAR before I was quite finished working on it, and I've been distracted from it lately due to other projects - adding Petocz's survey was something I was planning on. I'll toss that up soon.

I'll get to the rest later....please leave comments on what I've written down here. Hopefully we can work together and make this a good article. Cheers!  :-] Fleetflame 16:08, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Horn exfoliation

• A good source (science journal) about the phenomenon can be found here:Journal of Mammalogy if needed.  Burningview  ✉ 01:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

More sources

• Here's some more sources with information. Let me know if you can't easily access these, and I can get and add info myself. Sasata (talk) 06:43, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Title: Status of Marco Polo sheep Ovis ammon polii in China and adjacent countries: conservation of a Vulnerable subspecies

Author(s): Schaller, GB; Kang, A

Source: ORYX Volume: 42 Issue: 1 Pages: 100-106 Published: 2008

Ok I see you've used this paper, but the year is given as 2006 in the article rather than the correct 2008. I'd change it myself but I'm not familiar with the citation system you're using and wouldn't want to mess it up. Also, Why is the journal name/volume/issue not listed for any of the journal article sources? Sasata (talk) 07:55, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Title: ON THE TAXONOMY OF GIANT SHEEP (OVIS-AMMON LINNAEUS, 1766)

Author(s): GEIST, V

Source: CANADIAN JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY-REVUE CANADIENNE DE ZOOLOGIE Volume: 69 Issue: 3 Pages: 706-723 Published: MAR 1991

• there's also a number of interesting/relevant journal articles that are unfortunately in other languages, and I can only easily access the abstract of those (sometimes). For example, one paper suggests that helminthiases occur in the sheep:

Title: Helminth fauna of Ovis ammon polii in Uzbekistan.

Author(s): SHAPOLATOV, ZH. SH.

Source: Problemy Parazitologii Pages: 268-269 pp. Published: 1969

Coming back to this after a while, it occurs to me that a section called "Behavior" is missing... do you agree? Sasata (talk) 08:12, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Believe it or not, I was compiling information about behavior already. As to the other information, I'll get to it....I'm very sorry to have dropped out like this, but my internet connection has gone out for the time being; I'm working to get it back up, but in the meantime, I won't be able to edit very much at all. I'll get back as soon as I can. My apologies again. Fleetflame · whack! whack! · 14:21, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Additional comments

I'm not the reviewer, but I'd nevertheless like to make some comments on this article:

1. Please avoid referring to the subspecies as just "polii"; I think it is common practice in zoological nomenclature to use an abbreviation of the full name instead, O. a. polii. In that way, you also avoid having to capitalize a subspecific name when it's at the beginning of a sentence.
2. In the "Etymology" section, you imply that O. a. polii was described as a subspecies and that Blyth intentionally left O. a. ammon for the Altai subspecies. That seems highly unlikely to me, as 19th-century taxonomy was generally in a too disorganized state to do things like that; could you confirm it? (The original name combination in which Blyth published the name would be helpful.)
3. Is there no information about how this subspecies is related to other sheep? Are there no phylogeographic studies of O. ammon?

Thanks, Ucucha 20:52, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

No, thank you. :-] Point taken on the first; it has been changed, on the second....I didn't mean to imply that, I will change that. On the third - this has been addressed before: that information, if it exists, should really go in Ovis ammon. I've put in what information I can find about the other ammon subspecies, but that's as far as I think it should go. If you disagree, feel free to go ahead and throw it in, but I don't feel like spending too much time on it. Thanks again! Fleetflame · whack! whack! · 15:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. You might want to include information from studies like [1] and [2], which help showing how this subspecies is related to other forms of O. ammon. Ucucha 16:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Update I've been asked to speed along this review; it is now at the top of the old reviews list (62 days old). I'm going to officially place it on hold now and allow 1 week to address the remaining issues. Sasata (talk) 21:24, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

With regret I must fail the article. Please resubmit once the remaining issues are dealt with. Sasata (talk) 22:10, 31 October 2009 (UTC)