h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks for correcting me, everyone., starfish, and jelly fish are not fish. Aparently the only thing that connected them is the name fish, and that they are all animals. True fish are apparently a subset of verterbrates. One source under the heading verterbrates lists fish in brackets, among other animals.

It is a lot easier to check that birds, reptiles, and mammals, are all vertebrates, as they are all part of the taxa Amniota, which are all contained within the Subphylum vertebrata. So the only problem I have with the entry is that the latin name of the common frog should be in brackets.

I this this is probably near to being ready for editing.

great entry! can't think of anything else i'd like to see in it.


entries have to sit in PR for at least a week before we can pick them, this makees sure that no-one picks just from the top threads, and also it helps make sure that the entry is done before it's picked

Thank you to everyone for your supportive and helpful comments.

Thank you especially to Azara for the extremely helpful page on going through peer review which I have read with great interest.

I have made a few changes again but I would just like to explain why I haven't taken some of your comments on board

Wazu said

> I think the curled up long tongue is another 'neat evolutionary trick' . So the frog can just sit
> 'somewhere quiet and slightly damp' and *still* catch lunch.

This is true but I had to draw a line somewhere, there are many neat evolutionary tricks and putting the ones in that I did is purely arbitrary. Leaving this one out is similarly arbitrary, I can't defend it further.

Witty Ditty: Come visit the Boutique said

> Now, we need a frog smiley, don't you think?

Which of course we do

Ugi - Keeper of typos & spelling errers said

> A minor point might be that due to their lack of scales/fur etc, and having a sort of semi-permiable
> skin, frogs may leave the pond, but they have to stay in pretty damp places or they dry out. But
> then most of the UK is damp most of the time so that can't be too much of a problem for them!

That is a good point but really needs a longer article to do it justice. I think it should better be covered in an amphibian section

Silverfish wrote

> I haven't
> got much else to add, apart from a suggestion that the technical name for the common frog might
> want to be in brackets, as I think that is the common way of doing things.

Unless that is specific to the guide, the rule in the other world is to put Genus and species in italic or underlined text, brackets are superfluous.

I believe the discussion re fish resolved itself in the posts

Frogbit said

> The full name is as follows - Rana temporaria, Common European frog (Grass frog).

Personal predjudice against taxonomists makes me reluctant to put this in.

I thank you for your other suggestions which I have included

Thank you all again

CM

Thank you to everyone for your supportive and helpful comments.

Thank you especially to Azara for the extremely helpful page on going through peer review which I have read with great interest.

I have made a few changes again but I would just like to explain why I haven't taken some of your comments on board

Wazu said

> I think the curled up long tongue is another 'neat evolutionary trick' . So the frog can just sit
> 'somewhere quiet and slightly damp' and *still* catch lunch.

This is true but I had to draw a line somewhere, there are many neat evolutionary tricks and putting the ones in that I did is purely arbitrary. Leaving this one out is similarly arbitrary, I can't defend it further.

Witty Ditty: Come visit the Boutique said

> Now, we need a frog smiley, don't you think?

Which of course we do

Ugi - Keeper of typos & spelling errers said

> A minor point might be that due to their lack of scales/fur etc, and having a sort of semi-permiable
> skin, frogs may leave the pond, but they have to stay in pretty damp places or they dry out. But
> then most of the UK is damp most of the time so that can't be too much of a problem for them!

That is a good point but really needs a longer article to do it justice. I think it should better be covered in an amphibian section

Silverfish wrote

> I haven't
> got much else to add, apart from a suggestion that the technical name for the common frog might
> want to be in brackets, as I think that is the common way of doing things.

Unless that is specific to the guide, the rule in the other world is to put Genus and species in italic or underlined text, brackets are superfluous.

I believe the discussion re fish resolved itself in the posts

Frogbit said

> The full name is as follows - Rana temporaria, Common European frog (Grass frog).

Personal predjudice against taxonomists makes me reluctant to put this in.

I thank you for your other suggestions which I have included

Thank you all again

CM

:-) Right, then from this day forth, I shall campaign for a frog smiley! Anyone who wishes to join the campaign can post to a thread on the smiley page which I will call, predicably, 'Campaign for a frog smiley'! The Campaign starts here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F20473?thread=147307&post=1414471#p1414471 CM, what do you have planned for other entries? Stay B-), WD

Very interesting and enjoyable read. Full of information. Well written. And frogs are so cute, aren't they? There are definitely fewer than there used to be. I have some vague recollection that although ponds have been unceremoniously filled in and built upon, you have to get planning permission to dig a pond. Maybe that's only in certain areas or just big ponds. I'm not really sure.

I'd never thought of tadpoles as "free-swimming" embryos. I had to go and look up "embryo" in a dictionary because I had some notion that they had to be attached to some food source like an egg sac or a placenta. I was wrong (of course) - an embryo is just a young plant or animal in the earliest stages of development according to my dictionary.

This entry should certainly be in the Edited Guide.

Personal prejudice against taxonomists?
Go-on. . .

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'Peer Review' to 'The Common Frog in the UK'.

This thread has been moved out of the Peer Review Forum because your entry has now been recommended for the Edited Guide.

You can find out what will happen to your entry here: http://www.h2g2.com/SubEditors-Process

Congratulations!

Congrats! An excellent entry!



Stay ,
WD (still waiting for the smiley)

There we are, and the frog has proceeded into the next tarn, that is, out of the Peer Review pool into the Subbing pool. It will take a couple of weeks until this really-not-tadpole-ish one will turn into a full-fleshed frog, err... Edited Entry and appear on the front page

Congrats!

for Charlie Mouse!

Azara

Congratultions

*applaudse wildly*

Well done in getting this recommended
Also the frog smiley is on the Smiley ideas list (http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A651935), so we might end up having a frog smiley at somepoint.

Well done.