Wikipedia:Society for Marine Mammalogy/Content gap analysis

You're here because you're an expert in marine mammal science, and you'd like Wikipedia, which is read by 500,000 people per month, to reflect the most accurate research and scholarship related to your field. Experts can help improve Wikipedia by editing Wikipedia articles themselves, but that can take a big time commitment. Here, you can use your expertise and familiarity with a given topic and provide notes for other Wikipedia editors and students to use as a guide while they improve the article.

Analyzing a content gap on Wikipedia

1. Identify a gap in marine mammal science related to your research, studies, and expertise (e.g., Are you a leading expert in porpoises? Cetaceans? Marine conservation?).
2. Navigate Wikipedia's existing coverage of marine mammal science (See below for tips on navigating Wikipedia in this field).
3. Select a topic. This may be an existing Wikipedia article, a topic that's missing altogether, or a section of an article.
4. Enter the topic into the search bar above. This will start a new section on this page, where you can record your notes.
5. Add your notes about this topic, which other editors can use to improve the article at a later date. Here are some questions to consider:
   1. Is there existing content in this article that doesn't belong?
   2. Is one research method, point of view, or side of an issue represented in an imbalanced way compared to the underlying literature on the topic? What bias do you think exists in the current article?
   3. How does your topic relate to existing content on Wikipedia? What other topics ought link to it but currently don't?
   4. What are the key sources someone would use to write this content? Be as specific as possible—you may even want to add a bibliography.
   5. Optional: are there images on Wikimedia Commons that should be in this article? Do you know of any other media, free of copyright restrictions, related to this topic that are not yet on Wikimedia Commons but might improve this article?
   6. Optional: draft a paragraph of text that would be a comprehensive overview of the missing content. This may serve as inspiration for the lead section of the article.
   7. Optional: what kind of university or college course studies this topic (Note: this will help target courses and students who may use your analysis to improve the topic)?
6. Sign your post with ~~~~, so others will know who left this comment.

Introductory resources

• Help:Wikipedia editing for researchers, scholars, and academics
• The Wikipedia Teahouse; a friendly place to get general help.
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology for more specific help; feel free to joint the project
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Marine life is still more specific, but not very active
• Markup ("edit source" tab) cheatsheet

State of marine mammal science on Wikipedia

High-quality coverage

Wikipedia articles that undergo a rigorous review process may be designated as Featured Articles (FAs). These articles have been identified as the best of the best—they are comprehensive, well-researched and cited to reliable sources, integrated into the rest of the encyclopedia, free of plagiarism and close paraphrasing, and well illustrated. Of 4,681 FAs, only 9 of them are related to marine mammals:

• Blue whale
• Fin whale
• Giant otter
• Humpback whale
• Killer whale
• Pinniped
• Right whale
• Sea otter
• Sei whale

Tips for navigating Wikipedia's coverage of marine mammal science

Marine mammal species

Species articles are fairly well covered, but they have a lot of room for improvement. Here is a list of marine mammal species to find a species related to your expertise.

Related categories

Categories on Wikipedia serve as a navigational tool to find articles related to each other. If you know how to use categories, you can find more articles within your field. Here are some of the existing categories related to marine mammal science:

• Marine mammals
• Cetaceans
• Pinnipeds
• Polar bears
• Marine mammal rehabilitation and conservation centers
• Whales

beaked whales

detail all species-- more is being learned about them

Taiwan cetacean society

founded in 1998 at Taipei. mission: cetacean conservation through education, stranding response/rescue, and help whale-wathing program also extend to marine conservation

website: www.whale.org.twwww.whale.org.tw

Bloop

This article could be expanded.--Pernille.tonnesen (talk) 20:05, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Risso's dolphin

add the sound and hearing part

Range and habitat -- add the western and north Pacific Ocean

Marine Mammal Monitoring

This ranges from basic research on presence/absence, density and abundance or behavior, up through monitoring in the face of anthropogenic activities such as seismic oil exploration or construction activities.

Document needs include:

• Observation Protocols
• Technologies including cameras, reticle binoculars, theodolites, airplanes, boats, computers, software (e.g. Pythagoras, Mysticetus Mysticetus, etc...)
• Legislative requirements (e.g. reporting requirements under the MMPA or other local legal frameworks)
• Link to Marine Mammal Observer (MMO). Description of Protected Species Observer (PSO) as the same thing.

Also need reference to (not yet created) subject for Marine Mammal Mitigation in the face of Anthropogenic Activities.

Animal echolocation

Sections needed for organization

• Purpose (foraging, navigation, avoidance of predators)
• Evolution
• Detection and discrimination capabilities
• Click Types (dolphin, HFNB, FM pulses for beaked whales)
• Beam pattern
• Species-specific signals
• Sound Pathway (outgoing and incoming - mention mandibular fat body and acoustic window -reference Cranford et al CT scans)
• Physiology
• Use in ecological research

Overlap

• Whale vocalization page also contains "Odontocete whales" section (consider new page?)
• internal links with whale vocalization

-Soundconnection (talk) 20:14, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Marine Mammal Mitigation

Relates to the science, technology, laws and techniques surrounding mitigating the effects of anthropogenic activity on marine mammals.

Includes:

• Legal requirements (MMPA, NMFS or USFWS policy requirements, descriptions of IHAs, LOAs, etc.)
• How this relates to Marine Mammal Monitoring (including Marine Mammal Observer operations)
• Technology including cameras (some automated), airplanes, vessel and land-based observation. Computer technologies, radios used, satellite internet communications of sightings and mitigation
• Protocols, including the general processes of shutdowns, ramp ups, use of mitigation airguns and pingers (in the case of seismic exploration), etc.

aerobic dive limit

The aerobic dive limit (often abbreviated as the ADL) is a term used in the study of diving physiology of air-breathing vertebrates. The ADL was defined by Gerald L. Kooyman as the dive duration beyond which blood lactate concentration increases, presumably resulting from (partially) anaerobic energy production . Pinniped ecologist (talk) 20:38, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Marine mammals and sonar

Scientific attention

• Add BRS studies and results [1], [2]
• Consider adding stand alone BRS page

-Soundconnection (talk) 20:23, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Marine mammal health

• In the marine mammal article, there is a "Threats" section, but there's no mention of threats to marine mammal health, such as disease and harmful algal blooms. There is only a mention of contaminants under the ===pollution=== heading.
• Recommended articles to create:
  • Marine mammal health - connecting this to sentinel species article as indicator of marine ecosystem and ocean health and also connecting this to the One Health article (linking to human health and terrestrial systems) - these pages could also include updates on marine mammals/marine system.
    • Can break this into sections - viral diseases, bacterial diseases, mycotic diseases, parasitic diseases, clinical pathology, toxicology, non-infectious diseases, diagnostics, anesthesia, medical care, pharmaceuticals/formularies, euthanasia, etc.
  • Marine mammal strandings (including mass strandings) and unusual mortality events

toxins in marine mammals

There seems to be nothing here...PCBs, mercury, selenium, pyrethroids, effects on marine mammals, sourcesMarinequeen3 (talk) 20:26, 13 December 2015 (UTC)marinequeen3

mitigation of noise impact

methods for mitigation noise impact from pile driving: managing the safe time and zone for pile driving soft start set bubble curtain around pile

note: the range of sound safe zone need to be estimated by acoustic transmission expert in advance. it will require the sound source level, ocean topography, and etc.

Beaked whale

• internal links to animal echolocation, toothed whale
• cryptic nature of animals (problems for management and mitigation measures)
• acoustic identification to species level (highlight importance of acoustic vs. visual monitoring)

-Soundconnection (talk) 20:30, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Blue whale conservation

This article is currently a redirect to blue whale, which doesn't even have a subsection on the conservation of blue whales! Jami (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:32, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Cetacean Intelligence

Complex play: Bottlenose dolphins also exhibit a variety of play behaviors with objects and other individuals. Play may be important for learning social roles, hunting behaviors, and problem solving abilities.

Cross-species cooperation: Bottlenose dolphins have also been observed working cooperatively with human fishers.

Creative behavior: Since Pryor's work, additional studies are utilizing the "create" paradigm to examine dolphin cognitive abilities.

Cooperation: Various cetacean species have been documented engaging in cooperative behavior. Bottlenose dolphins, orcas, and humpback whales are among the species that have been observed foraging cooperatively in the wild. Research has also begun investigating dolphin cooperative abilities in captivity.

Keleseth (talk) 20:33, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

mitigation of noise impact

methods for mitigation noise impact from pile driving: managing the safe time and zone for pile driving soft start set bubble curtain around pile

note: the range of sound safe zone need to be estimated by acoustic transmission expert in advance. it will require the sound source level, ocean topography, and etc.--Chouliensiang (talk) 20:33, 13 December 2015 (UTC)