Talk:Ecological selection

I'm not satisfied with ecological selection. I think the selection page etc over-represent ecological selection as a category, and incorrectly classify sexual selection as a sub-category of natural selection. IMHO, natural selection and sexual selection are thought of as two distinct processes by practitioners within the field, with natural selection occupying the position in the figure in selection that is currently occupied by ecological selection. At least, some references should be added to selection and ecological selection to support the views presented and some historical information should be added to trace the change from Darwin's view to the one presented here.

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Some grammatical editing of this article would be helpful -- it is so full of modifying clauses that it becomes difficult to follow.

Brigner.15 (talk) 16:08, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I think this article could use quite a bit of editing. Some suggestions I have in mind are:

1) use more citations, obviously, and no original research.

2) Provide more circumstance for which it occurs. Ecological selection is huge component of natural selection, and I think it needs to be accentuated more in this article. Also I feel that the comparison to sexual selection is somewhat unnecessary, and it leads to more confusion about the issue.

3) Lastly, I feel that the structure of the article is insufficient. A paragraph providing more examples would be beneficial, as well as a history of experts and their studies.

Brigner.15 (talk) 16:08, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Brigner, the link you provide, and your sentence are about resource selection functions. This might seem intuitively related to what one might guess the term 'ecological selection' is intended to mean, but it isn't. It isn't about ecological effects on population distribution or population size. This article is about phenotypic change resulting from natural selection, where the original creators of the article hold that 'natural selection' has two sub-types 1) sexual selection, and 2) ecological selection. It has always been my impression that biologists don't divide up natural selction this way, but rather think of sexual selection and natural selection as two different form of selective pressure. This article, and the definition of 'ecological selection' as 'natural selection minus sexual selection', has always struck me as being a bit WP:OR, something that exists in wikipedia but not in biology departments. my 2c. Pete.Hurd (talk) 00:36, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree, there is some much needed grammatical editing for this page, and possibly a complete re-haul. The different sections do not make much sense as they are, and most of the sentence structures are somewhat confusing.

For the sexual selection subject, I do not feel that it should be removed from the page, because I believe that a comparison between ecological and sexual selection is necessary to understand ecological selection. Sexual selection is not a separate regime entirely from natural selection, but actually a mode of natural selection. Ecological selection is often explained as a cause of change, making it a mechanism of natural selection, but this is argued by many, so I feel that it should be described in terms of all arguments. This means that references should be added, so I definitely agree with that point. The arguments presented need support, and they to be contrasted with other arguments.

Brigner.15 (talk) 14:20, 14 October 2014 (UTC)