Talk:Formica rufa

Untitled

hey just added a few more facts about F.rufa, just finished a dissertation on wood ants and the wiki article was woefully short, so rectified!!!

Additional Section

I'm a Washington University student taking a class on behavioral ecology. I added multiple sections for behavior, colony structure, population and nesting. I have cited the sources where I got the research from.Pocketkings (talk) 07:19, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Peer Review

I've just reviewed the sections added by my peer above. I think that the information and citation is good, but I would consider editing the writing a bit more. There are some grammatical errors and sentences that are difficult to read. Also, all scientific names are typically italicized, and only the first word in Wikipedia titles are capitalized. I corrected this in the article, but just be aware of it for the future. I also have some specific comments for the Kin behavior section:

• What do you mean by “physiological effect” under the section on heavy metals? Physiological effect on what?
• What is the distinction between homospecific and heterospecific individuals?

Overall, I think these sections are well done, and definitely improve the original article.Blubird25 (talk) 23:44, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I think you can update the lead more to include information that is more reflective of what is present in the article. There is a lot of information in the article about foraging and kin behavior, none of which is reference in the lead. The description section just seems like a random section with information that could be split into different sections, and elaborated upon. Instead of having information there about their colonies and nuptial flights, I think the colony/nest information can be elaborated upon and form its own section. Furthermore the flight information overlaps with how the life cycle is, so maybe creating a new section with that information will make everything more clear. The last "Bee Paralysis Virus" section is very short and there is not much information there. What exactly is CBPV? Why is it important? What are it's effects and why is it relevant for people to know about? It was too short to be of any use to the reader. Otherwise I think it's a good article and with some additions it could be made much better. Hansika.n (talk) 22:55, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Peer Review

I edited some wording in the Population and colony structure sections. It is clear that the whole behavior edit needs some rewording to make things active voice. Sentences are currently clunky and hard to read easily. Also edited all F. rufa to be Formica rufa, as per wikipedia guidelines. There should also be more references per paragraph, currently it is a bit sparse. JSDavis2 (talk) 23:52, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

GA Review

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

Reviewer: FunkMonk (talk · contribs) 20:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

• Maintenance banner, missing citations, not ready for GA. FunkMonk (talk) 20:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

In North America?

Are we sure that the Formica rufa species is present in North America, as claimed in the lead? The citation, a handbook, alleges it is. But aren't we talking of the Formica rufa species group, not the species? See: "Red Wood Ants in North America." Ann.Zool.Fennici 42(2005).. I'm certainly not an entomologist, so maybe someone with more knowledge than me could look at this. Creuzbourg (talk) 10:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Hey, I'm an entomologist, also specialised in F. rufa group. I don't belive F. rufa is precent in NA. F. paralugubris is the only species from the group I know that have been introduced by humans to Canada. Will change this in the article. Ernst.T.A. (talk) 10:33, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

The source says it is. If there's a dispute, which it appears there is, the question of whether it's in NA should be addressed and explained in the text citing the pdf. Schazjmd (talk) 15:46, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

I misread the source, sorry about this. It is written in a doubious way, saying "this species may be native to Europe" but then continouing "but it is nearly cosmpolitian", a claim that is surely false. And it also says that F. rufa is present in NA, but give no referenses to records backing this claim, or any other kind of source.

If we look at specialised literature on this species group, nothing indicates a precense in NA. For example, the most recent standard work "Wood ant ecology and conservation" by editors Jennie Stockan and Elva Robinson (2016) maps F. rufa as exclusive to euroasia (page 18), and in the chapter 10 "Diversity, ecology, and conservation of wood ants in North America" by James C Trager, it is clearly stated that the wood ants of North America is a sister group of the euroasian species, and that the only mentioned introduced species of the rufa-group in a narrow sence is F. paralugubris.

Looking at https://www.antwiki.org/wiki/Formica_rufa every report from NA is also labeled "Dubious/In Error".

And as mentioned above, F. rufa is not being listed as present in NA in the article of "Red wood ants in North America" by Jurgenssen et al. 2005.

If there are any actuall records of F. rufa in NA, I would very much like to see them. If the claim by the William Robinson-.pdf should be mentioned as disputed in the article, I could try and formulate the text about this, but without any actuall reliable records of the species I would think it would be better to just exclude this. Ernst.T.A. (talk) 23:58, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

I now made a new edit where I tried to address this issue, please let me know if it should be improved in any way. Ernst.T.A. (talk) 07:42, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

vgh

5ry 78.99.20.244 (talk) 15:35, 27 November 2022 (UTC)