Talk:Pemphigus spyrothecae

This article was the subject of an educational assignment in Fall 2013. Further details were available on the "Education Program:Washington University in St. Louis/Behavioral Ecology (Fall 2013)" page, which is now unavailable on the wiki.

Review: November 2013

Grant, GREAT JOB with this article! I can see that you have poured a lot of time and energy into it! Here are some critiques:

Is it necessary to cite the first referenced source three times in the summary before using another source? Can't you just remove the first two times it was referenced and then it is assumed that everything proceeding is still from the first source? I know this is knit-picking, but I think it would eliminate the "cluttered" appearance of your wonderful summary.
PICTURES? While I looked through Wikimedia for more pictures for you, there were hardly any for the Pemphigus spyrothecae organism. However, I think you could also include photos that illustrate other points you were trying to make throughout your article: the predators of Pemphigus spyrothecae, a picture of the soldier class, any pictures of the range of this organism, etc.
Why do you have a subheading under a heading if there are not any other subheadings? I'm referring to the "Altruistic Soldier Caste" heading. It's unnecessary. Delete it.

Overall, fantastic job! You should be proud. Jdhale (talk) 20:16, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Good Job! You are officially a first-time Wikipedian.

GenesBrainsBehaviorNeuroscienceKL (talk) 17:16, 27 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Everybody! I am an undergraduate Biology student at Washington University in St. Louis. As part of an assignment for my Behavioral Ecology class, I am adding information pertaining to the altruistic soldier caste of P. spyrothecae. Enjoy.

Peer Review

First, you need to add the course banner to the talk page. Note that this was also the subject of editing last year, apparently.

Link to other pages. You're not doing that enough. It will help explain concepts.

Early characterization: write "2" as two, and 1st as first. Link to instar. Link to monomorphic. Italicize species names. Fix this sentence: " First, they first-instar soldiers tend to be more aggressive than others." This section needs some improvement; it currently sounds like you're just summarizing journal articles. Yes, I understand that that's exactly what you're doing, but it shouldn't sound like it.

Fortress defense: change "Defense" to defense. Second paragraph reads like a summary of journal articles, change that (see above).

Effectiveness of soldier attacks: italicize species names.Link to stylets. Link to cuticle.

Influence of Relatedness: lower-case in the header, except for the first word. Get rid of everything before "an aphid is either a clone..."

Clonal mixing and the soldier caste: lower-case in header, per above. Italicize species names. Get rid of years in parenthesis. First bit of the paragraph, as well as the end, still sound like summary of journal articles.

Clonal Mixing as Adaptive Event: fix capitalization, per above.

Fortress repair: fix capitalization in header. Italicize species names. Sound less like a summary and more like an encyclopedia entry.

Rest of article: seems pretty good, but needs an expansion in scope. See Ant for ideas.

Overall: good, but needs some work on the minor stuff. Notably, everything sounds like you're summarizing the sources. That's not what Wikipedia wants. Try to get some pictures if you can.

Anyway, as you may have guessed, I'm a harsh critic, so don't take what I said too personally. Good job overall. Leave me a comment on my talk page if you have a question. Gharris7 (talk) 04:03, 5 October 2013 (UTC)Gharris7[reply]

-I think it would be helpful to explain what "instars" are. Or to link to the wikipedia page for them so that readers can better understand. Same with "galls."

-There are a few other points where there are words that could be linked to other wiki pages. This would make it much easier for the reader to understand what they are reading.

-I went ahead and changed some of the first sentence to make the numbers to written out numbers.

-The sentence starting with "These soldiers have different...." was repeated twice. Went ahead and removed one.

-The fortress defense section was very clear and well researched! Nice work!

-The effectiveness section was very clear. In future if you are looking to expand this article, maybe look for more information on this topic. It would be interesting to see when the aphids are more likely to attack and when they are not.

-If the galls are related, it would be helpful to have information about when the aphids migrate. Do they migrate in every cycle of birth or only due to a shortage of resources? Is migration common?

-The rest of the article seemed really good! I think the main focus point would be to expand on the information that is already here and flesh it out (particularly in the "Clonal Mixing as an Adaptive Event" and "Influence of Relatedness on the Soldier Caste" sections. I also think at the beginning it would be helpful to give some general information about the aphid (especially about it's life cycle).

-If you can, include a picture! Overall really great article and very informative.

Hansika.n (talk) 20:41, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Peer Review

In order to elevate the quality of my work to “Good Article” status, I first reviewed all of the comments that my peer reviewers made on the Talk Page, which included the following: adding hyperlinks to other pages in order to elucidate a few complex topics (e.g. “gall,” “migrants,” “instar,” “monomorphic,” “stylet,” amongst various others). On a minor note, I italicized all species names in order to increase the scientific precision of my work. I also made two major revision to my article: (i) I adjusted the tone of the article, shifting away from simply summarizing the journal articles I utilized to a greater focus upon integrating the author’s findings. Following this revision, my article should be more accessible to a wider audience. (ii) I inserting a section on the taxonomy of P. spyrothecae. In doing so, the reader can approach the article with a clearer understanding on the evolutionary and developmental background of this species, within the context of social insects. Furthermore, with the addition of this integrative section, I provide the reader with an explanation of the morphological characteristics that this species has in correlation to its taxonomic identify; the reader can therefore approach the images and the section of my article that focuses upon predator defense (usage of the stylet) with greater clarity. I also edited the overall format of each subtitle in order to fulfill the technical stylistic requirements of Wikipedia (e.g. removing capitalization from my subtitles following the leading words in each one). Lastly, I provided a comment in the Talk Page specifying the revisions I made to the article in order to enhance its quality to Good Article status. --Gschalet (talk) 04:40, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Proofreading?

Although containing a lot of informative detail, the language of this article is difficult to understand and appears not to have been proofread. There are fragmented sentences like "The researchers predicted that the reason that galls were critical factor to the evolution of soldiers."

The reasearchers predicted that the reason that galls were a critical factor to the evolution of soldiers would be....?

I'm going to do my best to fix some of the problems but the sentence fragments are unresolvable. 126.209.154.222 (talk) 04:07, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]