Reviewer:Ucucha 18:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The article has some good information, but there are numerous problems, some minor and some major, a sample of which I have listed below.
Substantial overlinking: "China" is linked twice in the lead, and arguably doesn't need to be linked at all; what is the point of linking "mountain", "silver", "gold", or "farming"?
Some points under "Appearance" are not part of appearance at all; the section may be better called "Description".
"Though generally alone, each adult has a defined territory"—why the "though"?
"After mating, the male leaves the female alone to raise the cub."—please cite.
"Only a few bamboo species are widespread at the high altitudes pandas now inhabit. Bamboo leaves contain the highest protein levels; stems have less."—please cite.
"The Giant Panda's closest ursine relative is the Spectacled Bear of South America."—this is uncited, and quite possibly false; for example, doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2009.10.033 and doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2007.10.019 find that the giant panda is sister to all other bears. The latter paper says that some studies have also found a relationship between the panda and the spectacled bear, but this doesn't seem to be the current consensus.
The article is missing any information on the fossil antecedents of this species, including the fossil subspecies listed in the article Ailuropoda.
"Kermit and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., became the first foreigners to shoot a panda"—the source actually says they were the first Westerners.
Please be consistent in using "Panda Diplomacy" or "Panda diplomacy".
"conventional methods to estimate the size of the wild panda population"—what are those conventional methods? Counting?
"it is difficult for the mother to protect it because of the baby's size"—that raises more questions than it answers. Why would a smaller young be more difficult to protect? (I would expect the opposite.) What does she protect it against, anyway?
Nothing in the "In popular culture" section seems to have much to do with popular culture.
I addressed the citations for females raising the cubs and for the protein levels for the leaves. I did not cite the part about the bamboo species in the high altitude, but I will search some more.
I removed some of the links from the lead and some farther in the article.
Your raised a good point about the Spectacled Bear and I'll look into it.
I believe what was meant by the difficultly to raise a small cub was that it's defenseless when the mothers leaves for a short time. It could be reworded.
I found a source that states the giant pandas nearest relative "genetically speaking" is the spectacled bear. wiooiw (talk) 00:20, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I see your point about the website being a questionable source, so I will try to replace it. wiooiw (talk) 04:00, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I struck a few issues above. However, what makes you think that the source you cited trumps the ones I cited that favor a different pattern of relationships among the bears? To clarify, the article implies the relationships are as follows:
Giant Panda
Spectacled Bear
Other bears
but it appears that current genetic evidence favors:
Giant Panda
Spectacled Bear
Other bears
In addition to those above, there are some other, broader issues I didn't mention yet:
The structure of the article is... idiosyncratic. It jumps around from biology to issues of human interaction, and back again. Why do the two sentences of "Genomics" merit their own section? Is a list of zoos that hold giant pandas really relevant to this article?
It's not exactly a GA criterion, but the sources are very inconsistently formatted and often lack essential information (sometimes even the publisher, often retrieval dates). There may be more unreliable sources, and many seem at best of questionable reliability—I would prefer for a biological article to be sourced to peer-reviewed literature, not newspapers and websites.
It also says somewhere in it the hypothesis that "these two bears may be a sister group" received moderate support in a mitochondrial DNA analyses, but I could be reading it wrong. This is not my area of expertize but whatever relationship that this article does show is probably more reliable than the book that I used. wiooiw (talk) 05:03, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Since it's been a week and not all issues have been addressed yet, I'm failing this nomination now. I hope the above provides some good guidance on how to continue improving the article. Ucucha 15:46, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for putting in the time to review. After reading some paper, I should be able to edit this some more :) wiooiw (talk) 17:33, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The concern about the relation of Pandas to bears is dubious in the initial review. Based on a detailed analysis involving a large number of anatomical characters, Genetic studies showed that the giant panda is a bear and suggested that convergent selection pressures must have been responsible for the seeming similarities between the giant and lesser pandas. As to its relation with spectacled bears, the fossil record shows that fossil bears fall into two groups, one giving rise to the large bears and the other branch giving rise to a number of genera and species that have since become extinct, leaving the giant panda as the last survivor. Though this point seems to have been raised in the discussion, I guess the citations are a bit weak and this link is a much better one.[1]59.99.219.68 (talk) 14:30, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]