Talk:Evolution of snake venom

Tracking bitten prey etc

While your article has lots of interesting information, the section "Tracking bitten prey" is not relevant to the article title in its current form. AshLin (talk) 19:28, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

AshLin, thanks for the assessment. I'm not quite sure I understand whyyou feel this is irrelevant; when academic articles examine this topic, a fairly frequent question they ask is "what adaptations has evolution produced?" followed by "how has this adaptation evolved?" Now most of the adaptations uncovered so far are prey-specific toxicity in many different clades, and also the tenderizing effect of some venoms. Prey-tracking is another such adaptation, with it's own evolutionary history and distribution; in this case, current wisdom says it evolved only in rattlesnakes, but that could change. It is possible that my writing falls short on this, but this adaptation is just as important as the others to the history of venom evolution, or so it seems to me. Vanamonde93 (talk) 04:51, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Vanamonde93, now that you have explained it that way, I see your point. Perhaps, there is need for some material as regards how the snake venoms component of prey tracking evolved, keeping in mind the primary concern of this article is the evolution aspect rather than just the snake venom aspects. (A suggested improvement point) AshLin (talk) 05:42, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps rewording will make things clearer. Basically, this is a behavioural adaptation taking benefit of an already present component of Crotalus snake venom rather than evolution of active ingredients specific for this purpose. AshLin (talk) 05:48, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

AshLin, I'd be happy to discuss wording. I'd also agree that more info about the history of the evolutionary process, except that I don't believe this info exists yet; a lot of this stuff if the product of the sequencing revolution in the past decade or so, and the results are still pouring in. This is an "as of now" section, not a definitive one. If the wording could make this clearer, let's figure this out.

Also, here is a question I've wanted to ask somebody with a background in the subject; there is a little literature out there, not much but some (starting with the Casewell paper used in here) that discuses the evolution of venom delivery systems. Do you think that warrants a separate article, or shall we merge that information into this one? Vanamonde93 (talk) 07:14, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Imho, if the material is less, it can be part of this article; the article may need renaming in that case. In case, sufficient material exists for more than a section then, it would merit an article of its own. AshLin (talk) 08:07, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe there is more than just a section of information. Yes, we may possibly have to tweak the title; and possibly not, depending on how related the two evolutionary processes are. I will take a look over the weekend, and then we'll see. Vanamonde93 (talk) 11:09, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Events on cladogram

Glad to see the cladogram back, it's obviously helpful, as are the events. Actually, I think *all* the events should be brought back, marked in some way (say, with a question mark, like "[1]?" for a disputed event or even "[1]!" if Wikipedia is prepared to say we believe it's ridiculous), so that the diagram matches the discussion. So we'd write in the text "...they designated a clade, and named "Toxicofera".[6]" — ah, I see that's in the text already ;-} — and we then have "[1]? = Toxicofera hypothesis" in the key for the cladogram labels. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:37, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm still reading up on the literature, but at the moment, I'm not sure I agree. I'm not too happy mixing material that's accepted (like the metalloprotease diversification) and that which is not (the Toxicoferan hypothesis). Vanamonde (Talk) 16:40, 16 October 2022 (UTC)