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	Evolution is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia’s Main Page as Today’s featured article on March 18, 2005.
Article milestones Date Process Result February 4, 2005 Featured article candidate Promoted August 17, 2005 Featured article review Kept February 7, 2007 Featured article review Demoted May 31, 2007 Peer review Reviewed June 10, 2007 Featured article candidate Promoted A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia’s Main Page in the “Did you know?“ column on October 12, 2007. The text of the entry was: Did you know …that the Great Wall of China has impacted the process of evolution in plants? Current status: Featured article

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An individual organism’s phenotype results from both its genotype and the influence of the environment it has lived in.[27] The modern evolutionary synthesis defines evolution as the change over time in this genetic variation. The frequency of one particular allele will become more or less prevalent relative to other forms of that gene. Variation disappears when a new allele reaches the point of fixation—when it either disappears from the population or replaces the ancestral allele entirely.[29]

Should be changed to: An individual organism’s phenotype results from both its genotype, and the influence of the environment it has lived in.[27] The modern evolutionary synthesis^[1] defines evolution as “the change over time in this genetic variation”. The frequency of one particular allele will become more or less prevalent relative to other forms of that gene. Variation disappears when a new allele reaches the point of fixation; when it either disappears from the population or replaces the ancestral allele entirely.[29]

Some minor grammatical changes as well as citing as source when using the phrase “defines evolution as” Jake7460 (talk) 02:03, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done:

• No need to add a comma there in the first sentence. (don’t change the style when it’s not necessary)
• Wikipedia is not a reliable source
• The clause after the dash explains what point of fixation means. (the semicolon marks a division of a sentence like a comma, which is not quite the purpose of this dash)

Replicative Cloverleaf (talk) 12:49, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The phenotype of an organism is determined by its genotype. Sometimes the genotype may be programmed to respond to environmental factors such as when bacterial genes can be activated in the presence of some food sources but the vast majority of phenotypes are unaffected by the environment.

Most people are only concerned about very visible phenotypes in large animals and they tend to be influenced by classic examples in the textbooks. But this is a general article on evolution and we should strive to avoid introducing those common biases. Remember that phenotype also refers to the activity of the enzymes required for transcription, the position of cilia in protozoans, and the amount of junk DNA in a genome.

Also, keep in mind that almost all changes in allele frequencies are due to random genetic drift and not natural selection. If you keep reminding ourself of this fact you can avoid introducing unconscious biases into this article. Genome42 (talk) 15:06, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect FitCoal has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 December 8 § FitCoal until a consensus is reached. Tomato potato burrito (talk) 15:39, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect Fast Infinitesimal Time Coalescent has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 December 8 § Fast Infinitesimal Time Coalescent until a consensus is reached. Tomato potato burrito (talk) 15:44, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I recently deleted the section at the end of the article called “See also.” It contained a list of five things that readers might see also.

I deleted it on the grounds that it is not helpful and has the potential of expanding to enormous length whenever somebody wants to insert their favorite topic. I can think of dozens of topics that are just as relevant as the ones currently listed.

My deletion was reverted. What do the rest of you think? Is this a rabbit hole we want to go down? Genome42 (talk) 19:13, 7 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

“See also” is a fairly standard section. See MOS:SEEALSO. – UtherSRG (talk) 20:08, 7 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

MOS:NOTSEEALSO says not to repeat links already in the body text. A simple Ctrl-F search shows that orthogenesis (x 1), sympatric speciation (x 3) and parapatric speciation (x 2) are already there. I’d like to see a justification for what we do choose to include beyond the two that would be left after removing these. Mike Turnbull (talk) 12:03, 8 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That leaves “Devolution” and “Chronospecies,” which don’t count as major topics that readers need to go see (IMHO). Should we add mutationism, maladaptation, drift-barrier hypothesis, junk DNA, and many others? Genome42 (talk) 19:04, 8 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the items already linked in the article. I encourage addition of any reasonable links that would be of interest to readers of this article, though if the word or phrase can be linked in the body of the article directly, that would be better. – UtherSRG (talk) 19:07, 8 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Here’s the opening sentence of the article on Devolution (biology, “Devolution, de-evolution, or backward evolution (not to be confused with dysgenics) is the notion that species can revert to supposedly more primitive forms over time.”

I have removed this link because I don’t think we should be recommending this to readers of an article on evolution. It is not possible for humans or chimpanzees to “revert” to the common ancestor of humans and chimps that lived about six million years ago. Genome42 (talk) 17:29, 9 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I removed Chronospecies because it’s just a fancy word used to describe Phyletic gradualism. Phyletic gradualism isn’t covered very well in the main article so I added it to the “See also” section. Genome42 (talk) 17:45, 9 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I added a bunch of other links in order to show everybody where this could go if we allow it. Many of these other Wikipedia articles conflict with this one.

This is meant to illustrate a serious problem that’s the fault of Wikipedia editors over the past 20 years. They have allowed a proliferation of specialized niche articles that have not been updated when the main article (e.g. Evolution) has changed.

The result is a bunch of conflicting and confusing articles that cover the same topic. We can’t fix that right away but we don’t have to compound the problem by linking to them as I’ve done here for illustrative purposes. Genome42 (talk) 18:21, 9 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with your sentiments but as the related topics are well outside my areas of interest, I’m not going to make further suggestions on the details. Perhaps you should start a formal WP:RfC to get a wider view from interested parties? Mike Turnbull (talk) 12:20, 10 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Editors are not supposed to edit articles “to show everybody where this will go”. Edits are supposed to be for improving articles, not messing them up to prove a point. Sumanuil. _{(talk to me)} 23:19, 10 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Please explain your rationale for leaving “Devolution” and “Chronospecies” and removing all the others that I added, some of which are much more relevant than an article that talks about humans “reverting” to a more “primitive” species. Are you seriously interested in improving this article? Are you knowledgeable about evolution? Genome42 (talk) 20:46, 11 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the ones you added because they were not added in an attempt to improve the article, but, as you said, “to show everybody where this will go”. Sumanuil. _{(talk to me)} 21:48, 11 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

POV concerns and general link spam is the reason why parent articles of this nature that cover a wide variety of articles have created outlines and portals…. To avoid pointless arguments not really related to content of the page. Outline of evolution and the Portal:Evolution provide two different layouts to navigate all the sub articles related to this topic. Ideally top level articles should link to a well-organized “Outline of …” , alongside the main portal(s) to facilitate navigation of the overall topic. Moxy🍁 21:01, 11 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

What’s the point of “See also” if it only contains links to a nonsensical article like Devolution and a largely irrelevant article like Chronospecies?

If you leave in those two, then what’s the criteria for deleting all the others that I proposed?

Outline of evolution is ridiculous. It’s the perfect illustration of the mess that Wikipedia has become. Nobody is ever going to find that article useful.

Portal:Evolutionary biology is even worse. It starts with a figure that has been refuted and fails to even mention the standard definition of evolution. Genome42 (talk) 19:29, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]