User talk:Tony Wills
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Hello, Tony Wills, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! SpencerT♦Nominate! 21:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
Edits to Pukeko
With regard to this, the problem wit citing Britannica is that I can't check the fact. It flies in the face of everything I know about the species (and I am an ornithologist living in New Zealand who studies insular changes, including flightlessness, in the native avifauna). Moreover I can find no other evidence for this fact in journals or the Handbook of the Birds of the World (so I guess I'll have to wander over to the library and check HANZAB, sigh) but I'd suggest that just because Britannica says it is so don't make it so. Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:24, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
- Yes, I realise that, and was making no judgement about whether it was true :-). It is a pity that Britannica don't cite references for everything like a real encyclopaedia ;-). Perhaps just change the wording to 'it is claimed ...' or similar, until a more authoritative source is found? (Keep up the good work :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 00:33, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
- I'd be inclined to leave it out. No sense in being wrong on account of our rivals. As for the good work, I'm not lifting a finger more than I have to to to improve Pukeko. I've decided instead to improve Purple Swamphen. You know, the proper article. ;) I figure that is the best way to get rid of Pukeko. Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:38, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
- I wouldn't want you to be accused of original research, perhaps you should publish a paper on the subject of Purplkeko flying abilities in different regions, then we will include that :-). Good luck on getting rid of the Pukeko, they're a pretty hardy breed[citation needed], and just seem to keep popping back up (I think the Purple Swampchicken article may have started out as a Pukeko one) - even if you manage to annihilate the Pukeko you will no doubt have to go on forever fighting the same battle (pretty tenacious invasive species ;-) --Tony Wills (talk) 00:46, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
- I'd be inclined to leave it out. No sense in being wrong on account of our rivals. As for the good work, I'm not lifting a finger more than I have to to to improve Pukeko. I've decided instead to improve Purple Swamphen. You know, the proper article. ;) I figure that is the best way to get rid of Pukeko. Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:38, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Hi Tony, Just a note in this regard. Certainly, it would be extremely difficult to find any studies examining the proposition of increasing degrees of flightlessness over the short spans of time with which we humans have been attempting to quantify such things. It would be extremely difficult for me to even imagine how one would go about setting up some sort of short-term experimental system with this intention. As an ornithologist, I am sure that you know of the general tendancy of most Rallidae evolving over time to decreasing degrees of flight ability, in particular, in insular environments, such as is New Zealand. The high incidence of so many of the endemic birds, extinct or still extant, in New Zealand, pre-rattus, and other ground-foraging placental mammals, having been or being tendentially flightless might infer that this could also be the case here. So, the proposition itself of decreasing flight ability would not surprise me, however, how to obtain hard evidence attesting to this fact is another question! In fact, the only possible thing that I could think of from which anyone might have attempted to draw certain conclusions would be possible findings of pre-fossil wing bones and an attempted extrapolative morphometry done on them, which however still might present problems such as the projections of sure assignation of developmental stage, sex, and indeed, of same species!--Steve Pryor (talk) 19:35, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
