User:Macparent/sandbox

Week 12: Final Week

What I am adding here is what will be the final article and what will be on the Diurnality page. Here I have included most of the suggestions my peer reviewer suggested.

A bearded dragon, a diurnal reptile species.

In Animals

Many types of animals are classified as being diurnal, meaning they are active during the day time and inactive or have periods of rest during the night time. Commonly classified diurnal animals include mammals, birds, and reptiles. Most primates are diurnal. Scientifically classifying diurnality within animals can be a challenge, apart from the obvious increased activity levels during the day time light. Due to this, it makes it hard to say whether all species of a type of animal is diurnal because there are individual differences within classes. Some mammals are diurnal while others are nocturnal.

Evolution of Diurnality

A chimpanzee, a diurnal simian.

Initially, most animals were diurnal, but adaptations that allowed some animals to become nocturnal is what helped contribute to the success of many, especially mammals. This evolutionary movement to nocturnality allowed them to better avoid predators and gain resources with less competition from other animals. This did come with some adaptations that mammals live with today. Vision has been one of the most greatly affected senses from switching back and forth from diurnality to nocturnality, and this can be seen using biological and physiological analysis of rod nuclei from primate eyes. This includes losing two of four cone opsins that assists in colour vision, making many mammals dichromats. When early primates converted back to diurnality, better vision that included trichromatic colour vision became very advantageous, making diurnality and colour vision adaptive traits of simiiformes, which includes humans. Studies using chromatin distribution analysis of rod nuclei from different simian eyes found that transitions between diurnality and nocturnality occurred several times within primate lineages, with switching to diurnality being the most common transitions.

Still today, diurnality seems to be reappearing in many lineages of other animals, including small rodent mammals like the Nile grass rat and golden mantle squirrel and reptiles. More specifically, geckos, which have thought to be naturally nocturnal have shown many transitions to diurnality, with about 430 species of geckos now showing diurnal activity. With so many diurnal species recorded, comparative analysis studies using newer lineages of gecko species have been done to study the evolution of diurnality. With about 20 transitions counted for the gecko lineages, it shows the significance of diurnality. Strong environmental influences like climate change, predation risk, and competition for resources are all contributing factors. Using the example of geckos, it is thought that species like Mediodactylus amictopholis that live at higher altitudes have switched to diurnality to help gain more heat through the day, and therefore conserve more energy, especially when colder seasonal temperatures hit.

Light

Light is one of the most defining environmental factors that determines an animal’s activity pattern. Photoperiod or a light dark cycle is determined by the geographical location, with day time being associated with lots of ambient light, and night time being associated with little ambient light. Light is one of the strongest influences of the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) which is part of the hypothalamus in the brain that controls the circadian rhythm in most animals. This is what determines whether an animal is diurnal or not. The SCN uses visual information like light to start a cascade of hormones that are released and work on many physiological and behavioural functions.

Light can produce powerful masking effects on an animal’s circadian rhythm, meaning that it can “mask” or influence the internal clock, changing the activity patterns of an animal, either temporarily or over the long term if exposed to enough light over a long period of time. Masking can be referred to either as positive masking or negative masking, with it either increasing an diurnal animals activity or decreasing an nocturnal animals activity, respectively. This can be depicted when exposing different types of rodents to the same photoperiods. When a diurnal Nile grass rat and nocturnal mouse is exposed to the same photoperiod and light intensity, it increased activity within the grass rat (positive masking), and decreased activity within the mouse (negative masking).

Even small amounts of environmental light change have shown to have an affect on the activity of mammals. An observational study done on the activity of nocturnal owl monkeys in the Gran Chaco in South America showed that increased amounts of moonlight at night increased their activity levels through the night, which led to a decrease of daytime activity. Meaning that for this species, ambient moonlight is negatively correlated with diurnal activity. This is also connected with the foraging behaviours of the monkeys, as when there were nights of little to no moonlight, it affected the monkey’s ability to forage efficiently, so they were forced to be more active in the day to find food.

Other Environmental Influences

Diurnality has shown to be an evolutionary trait in many animal species, with diurnality mostly reappearing in many lineages. Other environmental factors like ambient temperature, food availability, and predation risk can all influence whether an animal will evolve to be diurnal, or if their effects are strong enough, then mask over their circadian rhythm, changing their activity patterns to becoming diurnal. All three factors often involve one another, and animals need to be able to find a balance between them if they are to survive and thrive.

Ambient temperature has been shown to affect and even convert nocturnal animals to diurnality as it is a way for them to conserve metabolic energy. Nocturnal animals are often energetically challenged due to being most active in the nighttime when ambient temperatures are lower than through the day, and so they lose a lot of energy in the form of body heat. According to the circadian thermos-energetics (CTE) hypothesis, animals that are expending more energy than they are taking in (through food and sleep) will be more active in the light cycle, meaning they will be more active in the day. This has been shown in studies done on small nocturnal mice in a laboratory setting. When they were placed under a combination of enough cold and hunger stress, they converted to diurnality through temporal niche switching, which was expected. Another similar study that involved energetically challenging small mammals showed that dirunality is most beneficial when the animal has a sheltered location to rest in, reducing heat loss. Both studies concluded that nocturnal mammals do change their activity patterns to be more diurnal when energetically stressed (due to heat loss and limited food availability), but only when predation is also limited, meaning the risks of predation are less than the risk of freezing or starving to death.

(Removed last paragraph entirely)

Week 10: First Draft of Article

What I am adding here is what I hope to add to the article. It is a lot of writing and I hope that peer review and editing will help me cut it down, but with still keeping all the crucial information as I feel this is all important to the topic. I also am going to erase everything that is already on the "In Animals" section of the article because most of it is not referenced properly, and I went more into depth what is already said. As well, it has not been touched in at least a year, from what I can see, and so I suspect the previous editor of that section is not keeping up with it.

*I need to refresh how to manually put in a reference with multiple authors for reference #7

In Animals

Many types of animals are classified as being diurnal, meaning they are active during the day time and inactive or have periods of rest during the night time. Commonly classified diurnal animals include mammals, birds, reptiles, and more. Most primates are diurnal. Although scientifically classifying diurnality within animals can be a challenge, apart from the obvious increased activity levels during the day time light. Due to this, it makes it hard to say whether all species of a type of animal is diurnal, like how many mammals can be diurnal, but many other mammals can be nocturnal as well.

Evolution of Diurnality

Initially, animals were diurnal, but adaptations that allowed some animals to become nocturnal is what helped contribute to the success of many, especially mammals. This evolutionary movement to nocturnality allowed them to better avoid predators and gain resources with less competition from other animals. This did come with some adaptations that mammals live with today. Vision has been one of the most greatly affected senses from switching back and fourth from diurnality to nocturnality, and this can be seen using biological and physiological analysis of rod nuclei from primate eyes. This includes losing two of four cone opsins that assists in colour vision, making many mammals dichromats. When early primates converted back to diurnality, better vision that included trichromatic colour vision became very advantageous, making diurnality and colour vision adaptive traits of simiiformes, which includes humans. Studies using chromatin distribution analysis of rod nuclei from different simiiforme eyes found that transitions between diurnality and nocturnality occurred several times within primate lineages, with switching to diurnality being the most common transitions.

Still today, diurnality seems to be reappearing in many lineages of other animals, including small rodent mammals like the Nile grass rat and golden mantle squirrel and reptiles. More specifically, geckos, which have thought to be naturally nocturnal have shown many transitions to diurnality, with about 430 species of geckos now showing diurnal activity. With so many diurnal species recorded, comparative analysis studies using newer lineages of gecko species have been done to explore more about the evolution of diurnality. With about 20 transitions counted, mostly being from nocturnality to diurnality it shows that there is significance of diurnality to the survival of many species. The factors that contribute to this switch is thought to be from strong environmental influences like climate change, predation risk, and competition for resources. Using the example of geckos, it is thought that species like Mediodactylus amictopholis that live at higher altitudes have switched to diurnality to help gain more heat through the day, and therefore conserve more energy, especially when colder seasonal temperatures hit.

Light

Light is one of the most defining environmental factors that determines an animal’s activity pattern. Photoperiod or a light dark cycle is determined by the geographical location, with day time being associated with lots of ambient light, and night time being associated with little ambient light. Light is one of the strongest influences of the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) part of the hypothalamus in the brain that controls the circadian rhythm of most animals, and so determining whether an animal is diurnal or not. The SCN uses visual information like light to start a cascade of hormones that are released and work on many physiological and behavioural functions within an animal.

Light can produce powerful masking effects on an animal’s circadian rhythm, meaning that it can “mask” or influence the internal clock, changing the activity patterns of an animal, either temporarily or over the long term if exposed to enough light over a long period of time. Masking can be referred to either as positive masking or negative masking, with it either increasing an diurnal animals activity or decreasing a nocturnal animals activity, respectively. This can be depicted when exposing different types of rodents to the same photoperiods. When a diurnal Nile grass rat and nocturnal mouse is exposed to the same light photoperiod and intensity, it increased activity within the grass rat (positive masking), and decreased activity within the mouse (negative masking). Experiments like this help illustrate how powerful and prominent the masking effect can really be.

Even small amounts of environmental light change have shown to have an affect on the activity of mammals. An observational study done on the activity of nocturnal owl monkeys in the Gran Chaco in South America showed that increased amounts of moonlight at night increased their activity levels through the night, which led to a decrease of daytime activity. Meaning that for this species, ambient moonlight is negatively correlated with diurnal activity which is what was expected for this species. This is also connected with the foraging behaviours of the monkeys, as when there were nights of little to no moonlight, it affected the monkey’s ability to forage efficiency, so they were forced to be more active in the day and forage then to find food.

Other Environmental Influences

Diurnality has shown to be an evolutionary trait in many animal species, with diurnality mostly reappearing in many lineages. Other environmental factors like ambient temperature, food availability, and predation risk can all influence whether an animal will evolve to be diurnal, or if their effects are strong enough, then mask over their circadian rhythm, changing their activity patterns to becoming diurnal. All three factors often involve one another closely, and animals need to be able to find a balance between them if they are to survive and thrive.

Ambient temperature has been shown to affect and even convert nocturnal animals to diurnality as it is a way for them to conserve metabolic energy. Nocturnal animals are often energetically challenged due to being most active in the nighttime when ambient temperatures are lower than through the day, and so they lose a lot of energy in the form of body heat. According to the circadian thermos-energetics (CTE) hypothesis, animals that are expending more energy than they are taking in (through food and sleep) will be more active in the light cycle, meaning they will be more active in the day. This has been shown in studies done on small nocturnal mice in a laboratory setting. When they were placed under a combination of enough cold and hunger stress, they converted to diurnality through temporal niche switching, which was expected. When the mice were active during the day, but slept in a nest, which help buffer ambient temperatures, energy expenditure was decreased by 8.8%. Another similar study that involved energetically challenging small mammals showed that dirunality is most beneficial when the animal has a sheltered location to rest in, reducing heat loss. As well, this study showed that a 6-10% reduction in energy expenditure is achievable due to spending less time foraging when it is lighted outside.  Both studies concluded that nocturnal mammals do change their activity patterns to be more diurnal when energetically stressed (due to heat loss and limited food availability), but only when predation is also limited, meaning the risks of predation are less than the risk of freezing or starving to death.

Diurnality can be hard to classify in animals apart from observing when they are most active. As well, animals are known to adjust their activity level patterns depending on their environment. Wolves are usually nocturnal, but will exhibit diurnality when travelling over great distances, and diurnal migratory birds will travel largely at night. As well, a mammal’s activity through the day can be heightened during lactation due to the young needing to be fed often every few hours through the day. It can be further complicated by the intraspecies variation of diurnality within animals, as many rodents are nocturnal, but some like the Nile grass rat are diurnal. Whether an animal is diurnal or not is largely influenced on their environment and as their environment changes, so do they in hopes of surviving and thriving.

Week 7

After reading through my papers more, I am re-thinking how I am going to structure my article... Thinking of including subheadings of environmental factors that can effect an animals diurnality, and within those I will say how they can either drive an animal to be diurnal or not. Will include examples of how it the certain factor has turned an animal to be diurnal or not.

Subheading ideas: Light, Ambient temperature, predation risk, food availability, evolution of diurnality

Week 6

The new article I have chosen to work on is diurnality, more specifically, the diurnality in animals section. It is considered a stub article and has a high to mid importance in both of the wiki projects it is involved in. It does not have very much information on diurnality within animals, and I have found a good amount of reputable information that I think, could greatly improve the article. As well, there are missing sources within it that I hope to fill in. I want to redo the entire "In animals" section because it only give one specific example of one type of insect, and I want to make it more general by including multiple species of animals. I will still include a few more specific studies to show what research has been done so far on the subject. My overall goal is to show how diurnality in animals has been studied, using multiple branches of biology, including ethology, physiology, phylogeny, and more.

I still need to organize my ideas more, but these are some topics I have found and would like to include (bolded words are what I hope to use as a sub header within the "In animals" section):

Advantageous traits (reducing energy expenditure), thermal niche switching in mice and CTE hypothesis (Vinne et al., 2015), masking, environmental cues that can influence the diurnality of an animal (including light), physiological mechanisms that are associated with being diurnal (Shuboni et al., 2015). Also include some phylogeny of dirunality in primates (Joffe et al., 2014). Include study on owl monkey diurnal activity (Fernandez-Duque, 2003).

Most of these topics have been reoccurring themes within the papers I have been looking at, and so I hope to be able to efficiently summarize a few different resources when writing about one topic. So far I have about 9 sources (not all are mentioned above), and I hope to include all of them.

Fernandez-Duque, E. (2003). Influences on moonlight, ambient temperature, and food availability on the diurnal and nocturnal activity of owl monkeys (Aotus azarai). Behavioural Ecology of Sociobiology, 54, 431-440.

Joffe, B. et al. (2014). Diurnality and nocturnality in primates: An analysis from the rod photo receptor nuclei perspective. Evolutionary Biology, 41, 1-11.

Shuboni, D et al. (2015). Acute effects of light on the brain and behavior of diurnal Arvicanthis niloticus and nocturnal Mus musculus. Physiology and Behavior, 138,75-86.

Vinne, V. et al. (2015). Diurnality as an energy-saving strategy: energetic consequences of temporal niche switching in small mammals. The Journal of Experimental Biology, 218, 2585-2593.

Week 5

The article I have chosen to edit for this project is nidicolous. It is a stub and seems to have multiple issues. I found it through another article I was planning on doing, nidifugous, which is the opposite to nidicolous species, but that one seemed to similar to precocial, and with a few searches, there did not be sufficient amount of good sources for me to use. I would just like to know if the nidicolous article seems appropriate and good to use for this project. The sources also seemed to be better. I welcome any advice that is given. Thank you.

Topic Feedback

It is appears that these terms are synonymous with precocial and altricial. Both of these topics are well-development and have extensive Wikipedia articles. Therefore, I would keep searching for a topic. A great place to start is to look at the "stubs" listed on the Ethology category page (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ethology_stubs). Jpethier (talk) 15:50, 7 February 2018 (UTC)jpethier

Week 4

Add to an Article

The article I will be adding to is the "Imitation in animals" section from the Imitation article. I found that parts of this section needed a clean up, mostly for references. I want to redo the definition of animal behaviour due to it seeming to be missing a reference.

Week 3

Article Evaluation

The article I evaluated will be the Coolidge effect.

There seems to be a typo in the "Allocating Sperm" section.

The writing of many sections of the article are not the best in my opinion. It does not flow well and it does not explain the studies well. It is written similar to an essay in my opinion, like the person is reiterating studies they included, and not actually teaching much. They seem to have trouble summarizing the information they were finding. They also include two different definitions for the Coolidge effect in the article, which seems unnecessary. You could tell that it was different people who wrote the introduction paragraph and the rest of the article.

Although the article seemed to stay neutral, and includes a section that has some examples where the Coolidge effect is not found within the animal kingdom which was good in my opinion. There seems to be cites for every statement and their references look good, as most seem to be from primary literature. They include a lot of links within their text which was good. I liked that they included the origin of the name of the term, as it a funny, light hearted story that makes the article more interesting. Overall the article is still informative and has a good description of the term, but some of the writing could be improved in my opinion as it sounds like it was written for an essay, and the studies are not explained the best. It just seem like they had trouble getting to some of the main ideas from the literature they were reading.

The talk page has a few conversations in it. One of the last conversations mentions that there was a student editor working on this article and it is evident in the history. It looks like they wrote most of the content on this article. I believe it was actually a student from Memorial who was also taking animal behavior and so this was part of their project. The talk page mostly includes some questions about the content, as well as corrections on what was on the article before it was expanded by the student editor. Most of these were older comments. This article is part of multiple WikiProjects, including WikiProject Physiology, WikiProject Biology, WikiProject Animals, WikiProjects Sexuality. It is good because hopefully there will be more student editors to edit, expand, and update this article as new research is being discovered.

PEER REVIEW - by munstudent2018

Peer Review: Diurnality

·        “In animals” section -Grammar stuff/trying to help you cut down unnecessary words. Probably unnecessary to say “And more,” you gave good examples! Remove “although,” sounds a bit awkward. Last sentence is a bit off too, maybe change to “There are individual differences within classes. For example, some mammals are diurnal while others are nocturnal.”

·        Maybe saw why classifying diurnality is a challenge? I’m unsure by reading it.

·        “Evolution” section – “Initially, animals were diurnal,” is a little vague. Like all animals? How long ago? Also, maybe establish some sort of timeline for converting back and forth if you can – like give an example of the timeline of a specific species.

·        “Fourth” should be “forth.”

·        “With so many diurnal species recorded, comparative analysis studies using newer lineages of gecko species have been done to explore more about the evolution of diurnality. With about 20 transitions counted, mostly being from nocturnality to diurnality it shows that there is significance of diurnality to the survival of many species.” Can be simplified: “Comparative analysis studies using geckos found 20 transitions from noc. To diurn.” Not sure where the many species came from if you’re still talking about geckos – vague

·        “climate change, predation risk, and competition for resources are contributing factors.” Concise is best!

·        “Light” section – clean up a bit with run on sentences. Also, “Experiments like this help illustrate how powerful and prominent the masking effect can really be” sounds persuasive – try to stay away from non-neutral words.

·        “it affected the monkey’s ability to forage efficiency” should be efficiently

·        “Other” section – A bit long-winded, you can just talk about 3 interrelated factors that affect the prevalence of diurnality – concise!

·        If you want to cut down, I don’t think detailed results of studies (including percentages) need to be mentioned! The conclusion was the most important part: “ Both studies concluded that nocturnal mammals do change their activity patterns to be more diurnal when energetically stressed (due to heat loss and limited food availability), but only when predation is also limited, meaning the risks of predation are less than the risk of freezing or starving to death.”

·        Good references! Just stay away from any sort of persuasive language and try to stay concise with the facts and not much else in between!