Talk:Apororhynchus

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Apororhynchus/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: I'll do this one. Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 16:14, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Comments

• First paragraph should be a lead section, i.e. a summary of the article, not something that introduces new materials. I've therefore split it so that most of the material is in a new section on the Order. The lead needs to summarize each of the sections in the article.

• Thanks. I've added a bit to the lead, one sentence per section. Is this enough? Or is the lead still too short?

• Better. I've mentioned the host bird orders, too.

• The account of the order contained material which talked about the -ida Order, the -idae Family, and the -us Genus: I've therefore split it into 3 paragraphs. However, given that this is monotypic, I wonder if this distinction is valid: did you mean to talk about each level separately (a very taxonomic approach) or is there basically just a list of features-of-the-order, in which case it all needs rewording a bit?

• Indeed you are correct, the traits apply to all species in the order or genus. To clarify, I've stuck to referring only to the genus.

• OK, that makes it sharply clear that the article is about a genus, so I've reordered the lead sentence to match the article's title. Apart from conforming to the MoS, it seems to me a whole lot clearer like that.

• Piriform is a dab page. Choose the target page to link. Done

• I really just wanted readers to know this means "pear-shaped". I can just change it to pear-shaped and remove the link.

As you like; what you can't do is leave it as an orange dab-link. You may be able to link it to a Wiktionary definition.

• Suggest you add images of one or two of the bird hosts.  Done

• Added section on hosts with a gallery of images of all known hosts. What do you think?

• More than I was expecting, but why not. I don't find that mode=packed works well when images are of differing shapes - the long low images make the birds MUCH BIGGER than the tall narrow ones, which seems random and arbitrary, so I've reformatted it.

• There should be a 'Phylogeny' section with a phylogenetic tree showing the group's relationships.

• Ideally yes, but according to this recent paper [1] "insufficiency of morphological data seems also to explain why the taxon has not been included in phylogenetic analyses so far" so we are out of luck there apparently. This paper [[2]] claims to have molecular sequences for some related species, but I can find nothing on this genus.

• I guess no fossils are known? But quite often, fossils of hosts contain fossil parasites, so it's not impossible.

• This may seem odd, but I think I've captured nearly *everything* written on this genus. Well, at least everything I can access. I have no information on any fossil record, unfortunately.

• Ok. One always has to be a BIT careful about claims of comprehensiveness, however.

• Agree, I'm sure there is more information that exists but I cannot access. Mattximus (talk) 22:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

• Why are ten of the refs formatted with AUTHOR IN CAPS and the other twelve not? It's really not necessary or desirable to use all caps; we need just one format, and I suggest we go with the usual {{cite journal |last= |first= ...}} format that you've used for some of the papers.

• Fixed all caps, working on standardizing citation formats.

• Similarly, when there are two authors, some of the refs use AND, some use &, and some just use the usual semicolon (;). Again, I suggest we go with the semicolon.

• Fixed by using all "ands", working on standardizing citation formats.

Discussion

First of all thank you for taking on this review Chiswick Chap! I have addressed the first recommendations and working on the latter shortly. The citations are a mix of some I have added and some that were added by other editors, so that may take a bit of time to standardize. Mattximus (talk) 17:06, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

• Addressed new concerns, still working on citations (that may take several days). But I've added a range map, what do you think? Mattximus (talk) 22:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

• Map is a welcome addition.

Ok I've now migrated all citations to the format you recommended, so it should be much better standardized. I even found a few errors and corrected them. I noticed your comment about the red link for Oriolus cristatus, which I agree should not be there. This bird was mentioned in this ancient reference but I can't find a modern synonym for this bird. Any ideas on how to handle this? And I believe I've now addressed all comments, and I'm thankful for all your edits as well! This started as an experiment to see if I could work on the first alphabetical species and it looks better than I expected! Thanks again, please let me know what to work on next. Mattximus (talk) 23:16, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I've fixed some simple citation errors, but there are a few remaining issues (bullets below).

• Oriolus cristatus is described from India, not Brazil. Something very wrong here. The description is very old and quite likely wrong; and the assignment to that species must be wrong also. The least we can do is to add a footnote to this effect, i.e. the parasite was found in an unknown bird, possibly resembling an oriole, but the name given can't be right.

• I went to do this very suggestion, but it looks like you beat me to it. Thanks for all your effort on this article I was not expecting such a good review.

• Several journal citations are lacking the name of the journal, the volume/issue (some journals don't have both), or the date.

• Ok I *think* I've fixed everything that is missing. Two journals for the Soviet Union do not use the volume/issue as far as I can tell [3] so those are the only ones left off.

• Bhattacharya 2007 has the unacceptable page range 1-225.

• Found a copy of the book online, added the url and correct page range. Mattximus (talk) 21:23, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

By the way, the gallery looks much better now, thanks for cleaning it up. Mattximus (talk) 21:42, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Ok, I've made one more pass and looked up what seems to be the last missing date. I'm glad you are pleased the article is the better for this review. I hope you will take the time to review one or two articles from the GAN queue for the benefit of other editors. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:42, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Copy edit notes

@Mattximus: I was making a light copy edit of the article prior to its appearance for TFA, mostly tweaking comma placement. A couple notes:

• Wikipedia's Manual of Style recommends that commas be used for separation (generally to separate clauses, list items, or parenthetics) and should not be used for compound modifiers, which we generally try to conjoin rather than disjoin. This brings me to the following passage, which was brought up at the article's FAC review:
  • The proboscis is large, globular, with numerous deeply set spirally arranged rootless hooks usually not reaching the surface, or with none.

  The commas around globular shouldn't be there, but it is a tricky passage and I was wondering if it might be rephrased for better clarity. In particular, I'm not sure what is meant by "or with none". Is this meant to indicate that the proboscis may not be present, or that the hooks may not be present?

  • Agreed. Rewritten as follows: "The proboscis is large and globular with numerous deeply set spirally arranged rootless hooks usually not reaching the surface, or with no hooks."

• to distinguish this genus among other acanthocephalans Should acanthocephalans be capitalized here?
  • Corrected.
• The species name amphistomi derives from Should amphistomi be italicized? This is usually done when discussing a word (MOS:WORDSASWORDS).
  • Corrected.
• A seventh species, Apororhynchus bivoluerus Das, 1950 Is it important to have "Das, 1950" in the text when that is in citation 10? It looks like a mix of reference styles (which is discouraged per WP:CITESTYLE).
  • In this case, I would like to leave it, as "Apororhynchus bivoluerus Das, 1950" is almost it's official name as well as the citation. It's often written like that in the sources. However, I'm really not attached to it, and can easily delete it if you think otherwise.
• Females are 2.13 mm long by 0.83 mm in maximum width and the proboscis is 0.36 mm long by 0.44 mm in maximum width. The male is smaller being 1.43 mm long by 0.53 mm in maximum width and the proboscis is 0.44 mm long by 0.74 mm in maximum width. Having "mm in" might look a little weird since "in" is the abbreviation for inches. Maximum width could probably be assumed and could be replaced with "wide". Also, if the length includes the proboscis perhaps "including the proboscis which is". I also notice the section which followed gave figures as width by length, and some consistency would make comparison easier.
  • Agree this is worded weirdly, but does changing maximum width to wide, after giving a range, imply a min-max range instead of a range of the maximum widths?
• Specimens were between 3.21 and 3.51 mm in total length, with a maximum width of 0.80 to 1.05 mm at middle and the eggs are around 0.07 mm long and 0.035 mm wide. Would it be better with agreement of the tenses "specimens were" and "eggs are"? (This had been changed during the FA review.)
  • Corrected in that sentence, however I did notice that there is a tense shift in the whole article if that matters?

Let me know when you have a chance. – Reidgreg (talk) 20:07, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Going through them now, thanks Reidgreg for the copy edit! All recommendations are great so far. Two queries above and all other changes made. Mattximus (talk) 02:31, 19 December 2019 (UTC)