Talk:Wader

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North American synonym shorebird. Scolopacidae is the typical waders.jimfbleak 06:25 Apr 3, 2003 (UTC)

Boreal bias

A minor point for many, maybe, but I have changed 'wintering' in the article to 'spending the non-breeding season', which is more accurate and neutral, albeit more clunky. It would be nice to have a more concise term if someone can coin one. Many migratory waders spend the non-breeding season (and usually the greater part of the year) in the southern hemisphere where, of course, it is summer. An austral bias would be to say that the birds 'winter' in the northern hemisphere where they breed. Maias 00:53, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Since only a tiny number of species (two?) breed in the south and migrate to the northern hemisphere, surely the normal usage (ie spending the northern winter south of the equator) is clear and unambiguous? jimfbleak 06:46, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jim. I think the point is one of perspective and ambiguity rather than the proportion of species that breed in which hemisphere. For people in the southern hemisphere, migratory birds that spend the summer there are 'summering', not 'wintering'. There is no problem with birds that 'winter' within the NH (such as various species of geese from Iceland or Greenland moving to Britain, nor with part of the population of the NZ-breeding Double-banded Plover 'wintering' in SE Australia); the problem concerns interhemispheric movements. As someone involved in research on migratory waders in the SH, when they migrate northwards around March and April each year I see them as going to 'winter' (and breed) in the NH. Thus using 'winter' as a verb is, in such a context, ambiguous, and substituting an unambiguous phrase such as 'spending the non-breeding season' (or 'going to breed') is preferable. There is some discussion of this issue here --Maias 11:51, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, but as you say, it's a bit clunky jimfbleak 13:18, 22 November 2006 (UTC)HI

References

Sexual Size Dimorphism in Shorebirds, Gulls, and Alcids: The Influence of Sexual and Natural Selection: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2640635

Patterns of Sexual Size Dimorphism in Seabirds of the Southern Hemisphere: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3545319

Sexual Size Dimorphism in Seabirds: Sexual Selection, Fecundity Selection and Differential Niche-Utilisation: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40234821

Sexual selection explains Rensch’s rule of size dimorphism in shorebirds: http://www.pnas.org/content/101/33/12224.full.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daisuke 780 (talk • contribs) 07:22, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest adding a comment on what you are proposing these references for. Also, are there any popsci or online resources you might be able to use as a reference?24.217.36.222 (talk) 17:51, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to address the many differences between all the shorebird species when talking about physical characteristics? I feel repetitive saying "some shorebird species have X, however other shorebird species have Y". I want it to sound coherent but at the same time not be misleading.Daisuke 780 (talk) 12:18, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

There was a weird formatting effect on one of your paragraphs. It was a gray box behind it. I’m not sure if you were quoting something, but I changed it to the normal formatting with the rest of your paragraphs. I think your article would greatly benefit with more references. It seems like only 2 were used. I changed “amongst” to “among” in sentence 2. I made sentence 2 into 2 sentences because it was too long of a sentence. I also edited the wording to make it more concise and clear. Your reference 1 is a link to a pdf. You should correctly cite it according to APA format, or use the manual entry form on Wikipedia. You mention that sexual selection is one of the factors. What are the other factors? I l liked how you linked key terms to other Wikipedia pages. Drhumz (talk) 20:16, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

I fixed a few minor sentence structure issues. The organization of the article was very nice; however, in each of the three paragraphs, there was a lot of information on the events (sexual selection, natural selection) in general terms. I think the article would do well if you could apply that directly to the group of species. Since the order shorebirds contains many species, perhaps you could find an article more specific to a species or group of species found in the order and apply it. Or simply remove the general information, especially since in the paragraph about natural selection, you have natural selection linked to its page. I also think the first paragraph would benefit if you could describe some of the sexual dimorphisms found rather than just stating them. For example, you could talk about the different colors seen or in which sex beak size tends to be larger.

I removed "According to Szekely, Freckleton, and Reynolds." This information was cited properly, so this part of the sentence just creates clutter. Kyranavia (talk) 23:11, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Fixed grammar errors and improved some sentence structures (please compare edits if needed). Also added hyperlinks to some words. I have a few comments on the second paragraph of Sexual Dimorphism section. It feels like you are explaining the concept of sexual selection itself and not what it has to do with Shoebirds. Also, is the part about gender role reversal really needed? Do Shoebirds have reversed gender roles? The final sentence ("Individuals of shorebird species~") feels like it is dangling and lonely. You wrote all the details above but the actual connection to Shoebirds is only so short. Also, there are a lot of sentences that should be cited (e.g. "Competition between males ~ male competitors.", "~high airborne skills". etc.) Try to cite at the end of a sentence and not at the end of a paragraph. Khzzang9 (talk) 07:00, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I also split sexual dimorphism section into two categories (sexual selection and natural selection).Khzzang9 (talk) 07:13, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

For my final edits to the Wader 'Characteristics' section, I took into account the critics made on the previous draft and edited accordingly. I added more citations as needed and fixed my previous citations. As for the information itself, I changed the sentence order around and tried to relay the information as a general summary. I used the Jacana species as an example of sexual size dimorphism seen in gender-role reversed species because it was in one of the articles I used as a source. This also allowed me to link the Characteristics section to the Jacana article page. I also removed the part about courtship displays. Courtship displays are a form of dimorphism because typically only males perform the acrobatic displays for the females. However, I decided to leave it out because the size dimorphism was an easy-to-understand example that I then elaborated in the Sexual Selection section. Finally, I added some more links to other Wikipedia articles so the regular public can access other information pertinent to this section without having to search for each individual Wikipedia article. Daisuke 780 (talk) 01:01, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Restrictive definitions

I'm somewhat confused by the restrictive definition of Wader here. I'm no expert, but my understanding is that a wader is any bird which gets its feet wet. The Oxford English dictionary seems to agree - "Wader: ... those long-legged birds (as the heron, plover, snipe, etc.) which wade in shallow water". Clearly somebody has felt the need to refer to this ambiguity in the article itself. Would it not make more sense to rename the present article "Shorebird", reserving "Wader" for a new, more general article, including herons, bitterns etc.? Such an article might take as its starting point the obsolete order of Grallae (Grallatores).Darorcilmir (talk)

I agree that this article needs to be renamed to shorebirds. At the very least, "wading bird" should not redirect here. Many pages for the herons, spoonbills, etc. refer to them as such, but when you try to visit the page for the term, you are brought to this order that is completely separate. I'm not sure if a new "wader" article should be made however, as there is the regional differences and the fact that herons, storks, ibises, and the various other "wading birds" do not fall into a common order or family, and as such it's more of a colloquial term that doesn't apply to a certain group. Limacidae (talk) 16:23, 3 December 2020 (UTC)