Talk:Bombus terrestris

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): Mkfreiler (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Chtsai016, Mohp7, Missmanasa, Vsalazar258, Jkottapalli.

Untitled

I allowed myself to be bold and edit the classification of this article... Not being a specialist of insects, nor a member of the "arthropod" wikipedia project, this reclassification just a wildish try. My rationale:

• the article was classified as "stub" on 2006/12 but went a long way since.
• I think this species, common in Europe at least, qualifies as "commonly known arthropod species". Hence the mid-class importance as per [Wikipedia:WikiProject_Arthropods/Article_Classification].

The contents of the article, however, may apply to a broader range than just this species (in the French Wikipedia, similar contents appear in a the article on "bombus"). So this could be merged elsewhere and the article then go back to stud/low range. --FvdP (talk) 20:22, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

193.35.217.253 (talk) 16:56, 21 February 2011 (UTC) I would suggest that that picture currently illustrating this insect is B. Lucorum, not B. Terrestris. Lucorum is slightly smaller, yellower and has a whiter tail than Terrestris.

Expansion

I am a student at Washington University in St. Louis and as a part of my Behavioral Ecology course I am editing and expanding pages on social bees. I have added sections for this bee species such as reproduction which includes mating systems, sex ratios, and reproductive suppression, behavior which includes foraging behavior, dominance hierarchy and learning and disease which includes effects of foraging on resistance, effects of polyandry on resistance, and threats from disease. In addition, I slightly reorganized previous sections into more specific categories and added 10 references. The colony cycle section already had a lot of information, but I added references where needed and wrote in more detail about it. I also added in a few pictures.

Mkfreiler (talk) 19:09, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Review and Edits

This is a very clear and well-organized article. The pictures are matched appropriately with their sections and add greatly to the article, especially in the pollinating and disease sections. I made some minor grammatical changes in some parts of the article. Specifically, I changed some wording in the second paragraph of the colony cycle section and in the last paragraph on environmental concerns. I also changed the section heading titled “Disease” to “Parasites and Disease” as most of the section covers parasites. Some additional information on certain aspects would benefit the article. There is very little information currently about nest structure and construction. Additionally, the unusual male biased sex ratio is discussed, but the reason for this unusual ratio is unclear, especially considering it appears to be against the best interests of both the queen and the workers. Kjkozak (talk) 04:35, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Most of the edits I have made on this page are grammatical or improving sentence structure. Because this is a rather obscure topic with plenty of detail, I made sure the information reads as smoothly as possible so the reader can focus well. I made no structural changes as I think the article is set up very nicely. I would suggest moving the section on pesticide exposure so that it falls under a more general heading, but that's a very subjective choice.
Flynnt2013 (talk) 01:55, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

I made some grammatical changes to this page, rewording some sentences to help the article flow. I also added some hyperlinks to some words that readers may not understand. Overall, I thought the document was well written and had sufficient information on various headings and subheadings. I would recommend adding a section on behavior; for example, a section that explains mating behaviors.
Mohp7 (talk) 20:36, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

The main corrections I made were concerning basic grammar and sentence structure, as well as the addition of inter-Wiki links. I added around 10 inter-Wiki links for words that I felt could require further explanation, such as “pollination,” “Tasmania,” and “eusocial”. In addition, I deleted hyperlinks to pages that do not currently exist yet, such as “copus allata.” I also added some transitions, such as the “in addition” and “moreover” in the first paragraph, in order to improve overall comprehensiveness and fluidity and break up chunks of strictly scientific diction. Moreover, I altered some basic spelling errors such as the misspelling of the species name in the section about homing ability. My only suggestion is to consider delving deeper into the topic of worker-worker conflict as it seems this is the only section which lacks the same depth as the other sections. That being said, the rest of the article is incredibly detailed and very well written! Missmanasa (talk) 21:57, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Second Expansion

I further expanded this page, with special attention to the behavioral sections. Under “Reproductive Behavior”, I added information regarding working egg laying and worker suppression of reproduction. I expanded the “Foraging Behavior” section to include the subsections of food alert and homing ability in addition to the information on alloethism I added earlier. In order to include more in the learning section, I added subsections on limitations of foraging precision and social learning. Kin-selection was added as an entirely new large heading describing the worker-queen and worker-worker conflicts derived from kin selection theory. I added one new section covering immunocompetence in the “Parasites and Disease” section. I reorganized the “Environmental Concerns” section, first, by adding new information to the sources already listed about the impact of B. terrestris as an invasive species. This now has its own heading. A section on colony development in variable environments was also placed under this section. Lastly, I created a “Human Importance” category and subsumed the domestication section under this and added my own information on agriculture. In total, along with some reorganization, I added 12 new references and created 12 new sections.

Mkfreiler (talk) 03:35, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Feedback

Overall, this article is very well written and researched. Well done! You should briefly explain what “alloethism” is in the overview. Also in the overview, it should be clarified as to what they have been implicated as being or doing in pathology studies. In taxonomy the statement “which includes most species of bees within the family most of which are solitary” seems like a typo, but I’m unsure what your intended meaning is, so you should change it so that it makes more sense. I would recommend moving the second and third sentences of the description section to the homing ability section. In the sex ratio section, I added “compared to workers and queens” in order to clarify the ratio given in parentheses (assuming that is what the ratio represents). I would move all of the kin selection behavior sections to follow reproductive behavior, rather than following social and foraging behavior. I think the worker-worker conflict section either needs to be expanded upon or deleted, because as it stands now it contains information that has already been covered in other sections. I think the heading of domestication should be reconsidered, as domestication is a very specific trait that selective breeding alone does not confer. I would most likely assume that these captive populations do not meet the criterion for domestication. I would consider renaming the section “selective breeding” or “captive populations.” Otherwise, I just made edits throughout the article to make phrasing less awkward, or to correct typos and grammatical mistakes.