Talk:Boquila/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 15:10, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

General

• I suggest you write B. trifoliata for second and subsequent occurrences in lead and body, i.e. you only spell out the generic name once in lead and once in body.

 Done

• The phrase "mimetic polymorphism" is redlinked, twice. Since it only occurs here, and ex hypothesi is unique to this species, it would likely redirect here, so I suggest you remove the link. If you want to create a redirect to this article from that phrase, of course that's up to you.

 Done

Comments

Lead

• Not convinced that on English Wikipedia we need any of the local or Spanish names here in the lead, nor that we should use language and scare quotes like "occasionally referred to as the 'Chameleon Vine'". Suggest whole parenthesis be cut down to "(also called the chameleon vine)".

 Done

• "are not necessary" -> "is not ...".

 Done

• Please name the type of mimicry as Batesian mimicry up here in the lead. You might want to gloss that as a harmless species mimicking a better-defended species.

 Done

Taxonomy

• Molina, de Candolle, Endlicher et al, Looser - all need original sources.

 Done

• "located in the family" -> remove "located".

 Done

• 2nd paragraph is not about taxonomy. You could rename the section "Taxonomy and naming" or something.

 Done

• Why should English Wikipedia need details of local and Spanish vernacular names, and indeed of the etymology of such names? Seems well off-topic, per WP:NOTDICT.

 Done

Description

• You've sensibly used the abbreviation "in" for "inches". Suggest you also use "cm" for "centimetres", throughout the article.

 Done

• On the petioles and petiolules, you mean "in length" in both cases? Better say so.

 Done

Reproduction

• Each flower has six sepals, are biserate, petaloid, ovate,... - Better say "The flowers have six sepals, and are biserate...".

 Done

Mimicry

• "Boquila trifoliolata's is ..." -> remove "'s".

 Done

• "one specific host species" -> remove "specific".

 Done

• This phenomenon is only observed elsewhere in some species of Rhopalocera (butterflies). - surely not true. Cuckoos lay eggs that mimic those of multiple host birds, for instance, so more care is needed with the wording. I guess the special feature is that an individual B. trifoliata plant can mimic multiple models at once. But Rhopalocera don't do that, I think. Best cut the sentence, or explain more specifically what is claimed and how the butterflies do the same.

 Not done

FN 2 states "Furthermore, unlike other reported cases of mimicry or crypsis in plants, in which the mimetic plant roughly resembles an undetermined background or color pattern, B. trifoliolata is able to mimic several hosts. The imitation of several distinct models by a single species has been deemed particularly advantageous in light of frequency-dependent selection, but evidence of such mimetic polymorphisms is rare and limited to butterfly species. Moreover, these phenomena are explained not by plastic responses but by population divergence."

While in theory I agree with you that you can probably find memetic polymorphism in many species. I am going to avoid diverging too far from the sources. I did add a little blurb about how butterflies differ, but avoiding going too in depth because it would be out of scope. In all honesty, we need a proper Memetic polymorphism article on Wikipedia. Here's an interesting paper on butterflies: [1] and another on how cuckoos don't qualify [2].

OK, more or less, again. It's still not clear what "simultaneously" means in the text; it seems to imply "of several hosts by an individual vine", presumably as it clambers over all of them. It would be helpful if this could be clarified.

 Done, I think I understand what you're going for.

• Batesian mimicry: this means that B. trifoliata is harmless to herbivores, but that its models are better-defended, presumably with bitter or toxic chemicals. This ought to be stated and cited. Currently, the claim is cited to National Geographic (not a suitable source) and Gianoli 2014 which does not mention Batesian mimicry.

 Done, see below

Possible explanations

• Gianoli: if you want to gloss him, then "the plant ecologist Ernesto Gianoli" would do: we don't normally do the "a professor at the University of La Serena, Chile" bit as it's not very useful to the reader.

 Done

• "the first to discover": repetitive, what would "the second to discover" mean, I wonder? Similarly, microbes in the environment to identify and mimic their host plants. This hypothesis claims that microbes from the host plant... is repetitive and overlong. Whole paragraph needs to be edited more tightly. Phrases like "In pursuit of this hypothesis" are redundant.

 Done

• Another hypothesis proposed by Gianoli is that the host tree may be emitting volatile organic compound into the environment that Boquila trifoliolata can detect.[14] - presumably either "a VOC" or "VOCs".

 Done, I added VOC in parenthesis

• Both volatile organic compound signalling and HGT have previously been observed between different plant species, but these processes are less dramatic and occur over the course of many years.[18] - the whole of this sentence seems off-topic. [18] Gianoli 2021 is about the role of endophytic bacteria, and evidence for that: perhaps that's worth saying. I suggest you rewrite the paragraph as it currently gives the impression of a madman thrashing about for ideas, in fact of pseudoscience, which can't be what is intended here.

 Done, I got a good chuckle out of this description, thanks for that. I restructured the explanations into 3 smaller subsections. I listed both the strengths and weaknesses for each theory, since there really isn't a good answer and Gianoli is very explicit about the limitations of both the HGT and VOC hypotheses.

• The vision hypothesis, if correct, would be remarkable. At the least, it deserves a subheading (a section of its own). It's not clear from the text in the article if Yamashita and White claim any post-1907 evidence for the hypothesis. If all they have is conjecture and century-old claims, it is remarkable they got their paper published; the text needs to go into a bit more detail on what they claimed, with what support.

 Done, added about a paragraph's worth. In my personal opinion, its junk science. There's likely a conflict of interest and the methodology is very weakly constructed, but it was very widely reported on when first published. There is some interesting stuff that might be correct, such as mimicking plastic plants and auxin as a hormonal mediator, but they approach this study in a round-about way that I don't like. They never once identify the ocelli in question, only assert that they must be there. But I personally can't write all that because WP:OR is very much a thing.

• "has largely been met with skepticism by the larger scientific community": perhaps "by scientists"?

 Done

Distribution and Ecology

• Where are the Nothofagus and evergreen forests where this plant grows? You say the plant is endemic to temperate rainforests, so the "also" must be wrong. The two sentences need rewording.

 Done

Human uses

• Please promote the subsection, it is not part of distribution or ecology.

 Done

• I fixed a spelling mistake.

Thanks!!!

Images

• All images seem to be suitably licensed on Commons.

• The "Illustration of non-mimicking Boquila trifoliolata by Pierre Jean François Turpin" serves no function in the Mimicry section. It should be moved up to "Description", before "Interior cross-section of the Boquila trifoliolata flower". The claim "non-mimicking" would seem to be original research (it's certainly not cited), and one might note that some of the leaves are in fact lobed, which Gianoli would explain as mimicry, I believe. Best remove the adjective.

 Done

Sources

• All sources seem relevant to the topic and (barring the mentions above) verify the claims made in the article.

• As noted above, I'm not convinced that Taxonomy Browser, Plant List, and WFO Plant List are proper sources in their own right; the WFO list actually comes with a health warning. All three sources provide information useful in tracking down the original sources which we should be citing, e.g. WFO mentions for Boquila Decne that "This genus name was first published in Compt. Rend. Hebd. Séances Acad. Sci. 3: 394 (1837)" (yeah, the formatting isn't ideal).

 Done

• Why is [14] National Geographic a suitable source for a science article? (There are 4 inline refs using this source.)

I'm gonna push back a bit on this one, I minimized it's usage and flagged is as a claim by National Georgraphic, but left it in regarding batesian mimicry. Giving a quick review of Wikipedia:NATGEO: "There is consensus that National Geographic is generally reliable. For coverage by National Geographic of fringe topics and ideas, due weight and parity of sources should be considered." While I broadly agree that a scholarly article is better (And I did replace it in most cases), WP:RS only requires that I give a reliable source, not the best possible source out there. In this article, much of it is contextualized around Gianoli's work and avoids the sensationalism of Felipe Yamashita, et al.'s work. We could bust out Gianoli's papers discussing mimicry as a herbivore defense and hash out a WP:BLUE rational (Since Gianoli refers to the points of Batesian mimicry without naming it), but that would be superfluous in my eyes.

Well, I can more or less buy that, but in the specific case of Batesian mimicry, we do need a scientific source that asserts it, not least because it isn't obvious why the models are distasteful but the vine isn't.

Reworded and added a better source, the paper 'Body size in Batesian mimicry' uses Boquila trifoliolata as an example of Batesian mimicry. I will still leave the Nat Geo source in since it is more to the point.

Thanks!

Summary

Most of this is pretty much fine. The Mimicry section (and its Possible explanations subsection) needs some rewriting and better sourcing as the claims are rather extreme and the use of sources is not suitable. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:31, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap, Should be everything. Thank you for reviewing this, its my first attempt at a plant GA so its been a bit of a learning curve. Picking up this article was prompted by my IRL friend Veridicae who was instrumental in researching and drafting (she says hi btw). She's on vacation abroad right now and away from her computer, but I'm around to work on this. Hope you had a nice holiday, if you celebrate it.

If there's anything else, please ping me. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 03:57, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.