Talk:Drosophila mettleri

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2019 and 4 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jillian Shah. Peer reviewers: Andrewoh29, Hannahwhite97, JustinLevin.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:19, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Behavioral Ecology Peer Review Comments

Hi Jillian! Nice job on this article! It’s so awesome to see how far your article has come from when I first saw it. The article is heavily referenced, broad in its coverage, and detailed with images, all Good Article criteria details. I would suggest you have an image in the Taxobox, so that way it can be pictured when someone Google searches the fly. For the subsection labelled “Not all are Monogamous”, I would include some more details about the study – namely, the conditions and the other types of mating that are seen, if not just monogamy. I would also argue that you have too much in your overview, and not all of it is incredibly necessary to be stated in the overview, as you go over it later anyways. I would suggest taking out the sentences: “Drosophila mettleri contains a p450 gene family and a target gene within this family is upregulated in expression. CYP28A1 upregulation has enabled this fly to detoxify toxic chemicals found in the rotting liquid of cacti hosts and to use otherwise lethal soil as a nesting site.” and “Due to physical geographic barriers between Sonoran Desert flies, gene flow explains speciation.” The former sentence is too complex and overly detailed, in my opinion, and will serve much better to be elaborated on in the sections themselves. Overall, great article! I am eager to see where it ends up, down the road! andrewoh29 (talk) 21:21, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Easily noticed is the absence of a picture of the fly, which is understable if there isn’t one available on wiki commons, but if it’s possible to get a picture that would make this more complete. Almost all of the sections were out of order, so I went ahead and moved them around in order to meet the article format expectations. Additionally, there were a few paragraphs in “description and sister species” that were not cited, so if possible, maybe cite those. Also, the distribution section is really dense, so it would be helpful if that could be broken down into subsections to help readers. Y.shiuan (talk) 00:44, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

I edited the first several sections to improve clarity, as some of the sentences were mildly confusing and unclear. Additionally, I went through and edited for simple grammar mistakes. My main piece of advice is to carefully read over sentences within the body text and make sure you're conveying what the article says, as well as read over the headings to ensure the page follows an overall logical, clear organization. I would also change the bullet point list under the Description so that it is in paragraph form. This article contained a lot of interesting information about this fly, and you did an excellent job of highlighting why it is different than other flies! Olivia.urso (talk) 21:16, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

The main thing I changed on this article was changing the structure and some content of the overview/introduction section. I combined paragraphs to make it more concise, and moved some information to other sections. I don't think the banana fact is necessary, but it is interesting so I left it. I also added the Insect and Diptera classifications to the talk page. I reorganized part of the genetics section. I recommend changing the format of the Description section because it seems to focus too much on Drosophila nigrospiracula, and changing all bullet-pointed sections to paragraphs. Overall, this is a very detailed and descriptive wikipedia page!Hannahwhite97 (talk) 00:13, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

For my edits, I went ahead and hyperlinked more terms that could be useful for readers to read into. Additionally, I did some minor sentence re-wording for some phrases, and I made organizational switches (namely, in your ‘Physical distinction between related species’ subheading. Even if you couldn’t find pictures of your species of fly in particular, you can use any photo of Drosophila to highlight the physical features that you describe. I think it would be great if you could elaborate more on the phylogenetic relationships of D. mettleri to the other flies that are closely related to it. It would complement the other sections well. Additionally, it could be in your best interest to elaborate more on your section about enemies, possibly identifying other enemies apart from just parasites.

Overall, a well-written, well-referenced article Great job!

--andrewoh29 23:01, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

This article is very informative and contains a wide variety of well-written sections! Going through, I made some slight word changes and altered a couple sentences to keep them concise. For future improvements, I would recommend working on adding some images that would be helpful for the reader as they are picturing the physical description of the fly. JustinLevin 10:36, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

This is an extremely thorough, well-written article. I appreciate your ability to synthesize such dense and complex information in an understandable and clear manner. I added more hyperlinks to clarify and give meaning to some of the more advanced topics you cover. Also, I added some sub-headings to the Distribution and Host Plant sections to make your work more focused and appear to be more concise. The amount of depth is impressive, but try to synthesize the information in as concise a way as possible to fit proper encyclopedic standards. Grammar and sentence structures were great: just make sure to vary your word choice more often. Overall a great body of work! Eengermann (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:14, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

GA Review

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

Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 20:59, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

@Jillian Shah: I commend you for the amount of work that you have put into this article, and I would be very happy to provide a good article review. I suspect you have been waiting a long time as this looks like a review that may take a little while. Could I ask you to confirm that you're still around and happy to make changes based on my suggestions (if appropriate)? I'm sure you can understand that I don't want to spend a long time working with the article if you're not able to respond! Josh Milburn (talk) 20:59, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

@J Milburn: Thank you so much for the kind words! I would love to work on getting the article to good article standing! I apologize for the long wait time in my response! 65.254.109.19 (talk) 09:31, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Great, thanks! I'll provide a full review over the next few days. Josh Milburn (talk) 10:22, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Ok; this is a really well-referenced and well-researched article. I suppose the challenge is condensing all this dense academic research down to the particular genre of a Wikipedia article - most crucially, making it accessible for readers. As such, most of my comments are going to be about accessibility and meeting Wikipedia norms. This shouldn't be surprising; I don't have any particular knowledge of flies, nevermind these flies! I often recommend that new editors look to featured articles for examples of how to structure articles and the sort of thing that should be included. We only have a couple of featured articles on insects, but I think they will be useful. Take a look at Thopha saccata and Chrysiridia rhipheus.

• Lead section. The lead should summarise what is written elsewhere in the article; some editors really don't like seeing references there (though it's certainly not banned) as everything should already be referenced elsewhere. Three paragraphs should be sufficient; I've tried to condense things down to that, but I think a bit more work is needed on accessibility. Focus on the basics. The first few sentences are great; it's a fly, it's found here, it's associated with these plants. The stuff about genes is probably not so great.
• Description. Don't start a description section comparing it to another fly the reader probably hasn't heard of. Describe the fly! Guidebooks will be useful for this, but if it's too obscure to be included in guidebooks, go back to the original species description. Diagnostic information to separate it from a related species can come after that.
• Beware of jargon. We can revisit this after some of the organisational puzzles have been resolved, but, for example, what is a "frons pollinose"? What are "less maturated gonapophysics"? If jargon is unavoidable, provide a wikilink at the first mention. If a wikilink is not possible, provide an explanation.
• Could you name the species of the Southern Californian prickly pear?
• Is it only found in the Sonoran Desert? I feel this belongs in the opening sentences of the distribution section!
• I wonder if things could be a little more streamlined in the "Distribution due to heat" section. It's not completely clear that you're talking about distribution for most of it; it feels like you're talking about breeding habits.
• Judging from the discussion in the "Effects of geographic barriers" section, you do have some information on phylogenetics. I think this should be included, along with information about the original description (e.g., authorities, origin of the name) and any subsequent reclassifications, synomyms, subspecies, etc. in a "Taxonomy" section. (Look at the featured articles I mentioned above for an idea of what this might look like.)
• "The main host plants include the saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea), the cardon (Pachycereus pringlei), and the senita (Lophocereus schottii) cacti." Could you provide a reference for this claim? Also, why is there no mention of the prickly pears here?
• The section entitled "Selection of host plant by rot patches" is unreferenced. Is it needed? I'd consider removing it.
• The next section, too; this feels like a (rather technical) rehashing of one study, rather than something central to understanding this fly species. I'm not saying it has to be removed, but perhaps it could be refocussed; could this be said in a sentence?
• The "Defense mechanism" section is also unreferenced.

Stopping there for now; I've got to the mating section, but not started it. Please double-check my edits to make sure you're happy. Josh Milburn (talk) 17:07, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

• "of desert Drosophila of the Eremophila complex are similar" I don't understand this. Is Eremophila a sub-generic grouping of Drosophila? The link goes to an Australian plant genus.
• Is the whole paragraph of "Courtship behavior" sourced to the single reference?
• Does courtship song warrant its own subsection? Surely this information could be incorporated with the other information about courtship behaviour; indeed, it looks like some of it already is.
• Similar comments about "Male-female control"; your referencing could be clearer, and perhaps this information could be merged in with other information about mating? Generally, I think you might make a bit too much use of subsections
• " Future generations showed transcriptional changes in genes triggering different metabolic pathways better equipped to detoxify the variant chemical environment of their host-cacti." Reference?
• "ectoparasistic mites that live" Could you provide some names? Family, genus, species?
• "D. mettleri is one of two species of nine that can use the juices of the senita cactus as food." Nine what? I don't understand this sentence.
• The section "Mutualism role in nesting area choice" is a nice example of content that is given its own subsection in a (perhaps not needed?) "Mutualism" section, when the content could probably be a single sentence (or single clause) in the section on breeding.

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Ok, we're looking at almost a month with no activity on the article or this page. Is there anyone stepping up to work on this article? If not, I suspect I am going to have to close this review as stale. If you need more time for some reason but do intend to come back to this, let me know! Josh Milburn (talk) 09:42, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Ok - given the lack of response, I am going to close the review at this time. Commendable though the article is, it is not ready to be promoted to GA status, for the reasons outlined above. Once you (or anyone!) has worked your way through my comments, you should renominate. Then, a fresh pair of eyes can take a look at the article. Josh Milburn (talk) 14:32, 28 March 2020 (UTC)