Stranger forever

December 2012

Hello, Stranger forever. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may need to consider our guidance on conflicts of interest.

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For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you. MrOllie (talk) 16:13, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Keep up the good work!

As you may know, you are not in violation of any Wikipedia policy, not even close. Your contributions are much appreciated. Peter Brown (talk) 21:45, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

What is a lissamphibian?

Very much an amateur in this business, I do not know the answer. In the Lissamphibia article, it is somehow supposed to be obvious that, if the Lepospondyli are ancestral to the Gymnophiona and the Temnospondyli are ancestral to the Batrachia, then Lissamphibia is biphyletic. This is not obvious. No reason is provided why, if the phylogeny works out that way, the entire Gymnophiona-Batrachia crown clade—including all of Lepospondyli and all of Temnospondyli—should not be included in Lissamphibia. Apparently there is something un-lissamphibian about the basal members of these groups, but the article gives no hint what this is. Can you clarify? I would much appreciate it. Peter Brown (talk) 19:10, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter. I tried clarifying the definition of Lissamphibia. I hope that this is more intelligible now. Stranger forever (talk) 20:04, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

Tetrapod biodiversity trend

I note that this edit, which I made today, reverts an edit of yours. I imply in my edit summary that Sahney et al. (2010) does support the claim that, overall, the biodiversity of tetrapods has grown exponentially over time. They write that "The pattern of diversity increase for tetrapods appears to have been essentially exponential, with many setbacks and evident damping"; I don't read the part after the comma as negating any part of the clause before but merely as adding the information that there have been significant ups and downs within the overall exponential pattern of increase. I also don't see that the Laurin and Marjanović paper which you cite provides significant support for the contention that lissamphibian diversity increased exponentially; rather, the paper assumes exponentiality and compares models embodying that assumption. Do you interpret these sources differently? Peter Brown (talk) 21:43, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Peter. Sahney may mention exponential diversification (although I did not find this by searching the string of characters in their paper), but their graphics certainly don't support this claim. The Marjanovic & Laurin (2008) paper that I had added studies this in detail in lissampibians. The other one, by Ward et al. (2005) provides a thorough study with lots of primaty data on the end-Permian event. In my opinion, these two papers provide a much more solid justification for these parts of the text than the Sahney paper, which is why I added them. I retained the citation of Sahney for the main focus of that paper, which is the link between tropical rainforest habitat and tetrapod diversification. I just reverted this edit. I hope that you will agree with this. Best wishes, Stranger forever (talk) 22:23, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd hoped this was a simple misunderstanding, but there seem to be some issues here. I'm copying this discussion, with very minor adjustments, to the article talk page. Peter Brown (talk) 00:22, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I just responded there. Stranger forever (talk) 06:34, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Frog

I see you made an edit to the article Frog where you used the word "dissorphonid". On looking this word up on Google it did not seem to exist, nor had I access to more than the abstract of the article you cited. Did you mean "dissorophoid"? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 14:05, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for your correction. You are right; that was a typo.Stranger forever (talk) 14:43, 21 August 2014 (UTC)