Talk:Trigona corvina

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Claire.packer (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Mandeljulia, Missmanasa.

Constructive Feedback

Overall, the article was extremely informative and well written. Especially good job with the citations; every fact has a clear citation following it. You also do a great job explaining the range of interactions that T.corvina has with other species. I do, however, think you can potentially add a bit more within-species interaction information (i.e within species aggression, social hierarchy, etc.)-- how do individual T.corvina interact with other individual T.corvina? As of right now, “communication” and “kin selection” are the only sections that talk about interactions /behaviors within species. I think it would also be incredibly interesting if you detailed exactly how pheromones serve as a method of sexual selection between males and females (there seems to be a bit more information about this in the paper that you cited). Furthermore, I think you can be a bit more clear in the “interaction with other species section”. There you use the word “bee” a lot and it becomes a little unclear what you are talking about (other species or other T. corvina individuals from a different colony-- the header does help clear this up a bit, but more clarity in the main text would not hurt). It would also be really useful to name/cite some of these “other” species of bees you are referring to in this section. I went ahead and added a couple of hyperlinks to words such are “foraging”, “pheromones”, “pollen”, “honeybees”, “M. ruficrus”, “Trigona hyalinata” and more. Overall great work! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jkottapalli (talk) 20:14, 01 October 2015 (UTC)

Suggestions/Corrections

The main corrections I made were concerning basic grammar and sentence structure, as well as the addition of inter-Wiki links. In the first sentence, I corrected an error of subject-verb agreement by changing “live” to “lives” as the word “species” was used in a singular context. I also added around 10 inter-Wiki links for words that I felt could require further explanation, such as “pheromones,” “mandibles,” and “sexual selection”. Moreover, I reworded the first sentence of the defense section; it was originally one lengthy sentence so I divided it into two shorter sentences for more comprehensive clarity. My suggestions for improvement include possibly adding additional information to the section on "Parasites" as this seems quite brief. Perhaps describe how the parasite affects the host insect or a defense mechanism for eliminating the parasite.

Otherwise, I thought the article was very well written and thorough! :) Missmanasa (talk) 19:14, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Feedback

I have some questions and constructive feedback I’d like to share about the article. First, in the overview you indicate that these bees can be parasitic and then follow that up with a statement about their crop pollination. Does this mean they are parasitic in such a way as to harm humans/human crop production, or are they parasitic to other bees? It would be helpful to clarify this distinction. The whole taxonomy and phylogeny section could use more explanation. When you say T. corvina was classified to M. ruficrus, does this mean they were reclassified as a new species? Or are they a sub-species? You may also want to explain why it is significant that they are only “slightly more related to M. ruficrus than to Trigona hyalinata.” In distribution and habitat, you may want to clarify the last sentence so it is clear that the colonies occur in the forest at a density of 1.0 colonies/ha. (assuming that is what you are trying to say). At the end of colony cycle, your final senetence could be streamlined to simply say: “Since nests…branches, T. corvina nests are often attacked by large animals.” In the kin selection section, you say “similarity is greater…” which implies there should be some sort of comparison. Do you mean to say similarity is greater between neighboring nests than more distant nests? The meaning of the last sentence in the defense section is a little unclear. Do you mean if two different colonies are fighting? And what type of splitting of resources occurs to avoid excessive deaths? Additionally, I made small grammatical edits throughout the article, as well as small word changes to increase clarity. Let me know if you have any questions about my comments, thanks! Mandeljulia (talk) 16:18, 30 September 2015 (UTC)