Talk:Behavioral plasticity

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Wshoenberger.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Kasey's Comments

Lots of great information. I liked the coverage of defining, then talking about why it has evolved, presenting different types of cues that change behavior, bringing in examples. Pull the evolution section up. In general, the biggest thing to work on is to simplify, simplify, simplify. Try to find other ways to say jargon-y terms, and boil the information down. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out!

First sentence hard to follow. Same with second. Make each more simple. You might need to leave out information for later in the article, or expand into more than two sentences. Think about writing for your family to understand it.

You need citations for first two sentences.

Background section is a great start. I would just use this as the introduction. I don’t know what it means that behavioral plasticity has become a more widely used hypothesis? I would omit the last sentence of the paragraph, actually. It will take a lot more space to spell out what you mean, and it is not saying what you think it is (plasticity without genetic variance is not controversial…you can have a single plastic phenotype that does not vary among individuals)

In types, remove plasticities at the end of the first sentence. You might also want to just state “Exogenous can include …” Endogenous can include…” It will remove some of the repetition. In general, this section might benefit from reorganization and breaking down into shorter sentences. You might consider removing endogenous and exogenous in the main writing and talk about how animals change behavior based on internal (endogenous) cues like blah blha blah or external (exogenous) cues like blah blah balh. Then use internal and external. Think about what this really boils down to and the simplest, quickest way to explain it.

I think the terminology is making it a bit hard to follow. When you start the section on “contextual (or activational)…” it gets confusing. I would choose one term, and say early on it is also called the other term, then just stick to the one term throughout.

“Distinguishing between…” section is bogged down with terms. Is it important to distinguish them in this much detail, or can you boil it down further? Think of different terminology that you can use for phrases like ‘behavioral integration’ and ‘spectrum of behavioral phenotypes’ that the average Wikipedia reader will understand.

The examples are great. I would remove the terminology. Just simply use them as ways to illustrate the great variety of behaviors that are highly plastic and the range of cues that trigger changes in behavior.

Potential versus realized plasticity is probably too much information for the article. Keep the writing in a safe place on your computer to use at a different time, and boil this down to 1-2 sentences.

Last section: basic message is that behavioral plasticity allows animals to adjust very quickly to changes in the environment. Center the writing around this idea, and keep it in layman’s terms. Why should your average person care about behavioral plasticity?

Justin's Review

I think that the "Types" section could benefit from a few bullet points that break down the key issues could be helpful and easier to digest than just one large paragraph?? Perhaps a bullet for each of the types followed by bullets for each subgroup?

The examples are nice, perhaps think about adding images for a more appealing look? Jgarret8 (talk) 18:36, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Sterling's Peer Review

Nice, concise intro - Maybe put a picture at the top (what is the quintessential behavior example?) to grab readers with short attention spans. Also, maybe frame in the context of plain phenotypic plasticity (with link) just so the reader has more of a hook to hang it on.

Third sentence after "Background": "Although, behavioral plasticity " I don't think you need a comma after "Although."

You're second sentence under "Types": "These classifications can also be defined further into the subcategories of ..." I think you meant to put something else here? 4th sentence: " When an external stimuli" - stimulus. Fifth sentence: "organisms current behavior" - organism's. Last sentence of this paragraph needs a period - so is endogenous plasticity solely physiological?

These distinctions sound really important - could you put them into a sort of bullet point list or table to make them more visual (e.g., which subcategories go where), I just know I am more of a visual thinker.

The second paragraph here sort of repeats the parts in the first paragraph about contextual and developmental plasticity - I was just wondering, are these both subcategories of endogenous and exogenous, or vice versa - i.e., so you can have contextual and developmental endogenous and exogenous plasticity? I was also just wondering in general is there is a clear distinction between exogenous and endogenous plasticity - since I'm imagining most changes in internal cues resulting from external stimuli.

With developmental and contextual plasticity - is contextual plasticity always dependent on developmental plasticity then, since, if something changes in development, its phenotypic response will be fixed later in life? I don't know if I'm thinking of this correctly. I think you touched on this in your presentation, but since you said developmental plasticity encompasses "learning", can't this also happen later in life, so not all in developmental stages necessarily?

Italicize zebrafish ("Danio rerio") under "Examples"

Do you have a source for the "Potential vs. realized plasticity" and the "Evolutionary causes and consequences" paragraph?

Also, maybe link to some of the terms that non-biologists might not know as well, e.g., genotype, phenotype, adaptive norm, etc.

Cool article! — Preceding unsigned comment added by SterlingHerron (talk • contribs) 02:54, 20 April 2016 (UTC)