Talk:Mischocyttarus mexicanus

This article was the subject of an educational assignment in Fall 2014. Further details were available on the "Education Program:Washington University in St. Louis/Behavioral Ecology (Fall 2014)" page, which is now unavailable on the wiki.

A fact from Mischocyttarus mexicanus appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 24 December 2014 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Mischocyttarus mexicanus female wasps may be brood parasites, cannibalizing eggs of a foreign nest and placing an egg of their own in an empty cell?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2014/December. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Mischocyttarus mexicanus.

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I removed the direct links that were not removed by the previous editor. In the taxonomy and phylogeny section and in the general overview section, there are three in text citations – one (Richards, 1978) and two for (de Saussure) – that are not cited at the end and are not footnoted. Although I am not sure if this is intentional, the writer may consider adding footnotes for these two citations. Overall, this article was really well written and contained a wealth of information. Yangjennyh (talk) 15:40, 19 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

-Yeah, I did that intentionally as it seems to be convention in the scientific literature to internally cite the identifier of the species in this way. But if there is a better way to do that feel free to change it! Gaharrison94 (talk) 02:09, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

General

Direct links were removed if they did not have existing pages for them, such as in the cases of M. m. cubicola, M. m. mexicanus, and M. angulatus. Direct links were also removed if they were repeated, such as for Mischocyttarus, genus, and larvae. And lastly, direct links were removed if they were to disambiguation pages, such as for colony, behavior, and founder. I also edited some sentences that either had minor grammatical mistakes or were awkward. For example, in the distribution and habitat section, I grouped all the information about M. m. cubicola so that the information made more sense. This article was well-written and had very few grammatical mistakes. There is also a lot of interesting information in the article, such as the two stable nesting strategies. I think the article would benefit from better organization separating the two subspecies or just talking about the species in general. Some sections could also benefit from having more information, such as the description and identification section, the mimicry section, and the diet section. Mayxac (talk) 02:03, 18 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Description and identification

How are the two subspecies physically differentiated? How large are they relative to other wasps? What color(s) are they? Mayxac (talk) 02:03, 18 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Predators

The article could benefit from variation in sentence structure. For example, two sentences begin with “Additionally,” and they occur right after each other. Adding variation can make the article flow better. Mayxac (talk) 02:03, 18 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Mating

I think a section on mate selection would be helpful. I would be interested to learn how mates are chosen and how many of these wasps actually get to mate.Courtney.cleveland (talk) 19:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions

Overall this was a well written article; I learned a lot about M. mexicanus. The Cannibalism and usurpation section was very interesting. I did not notice any grammar mistakes, and the heading titles represented the paragraphs well. This article (if possible) could benefit more by adding information to mimicry. How does the papaya fruit fly benefit from looking like the M. mexicanus? What about looking like the M. mexicanus makes the fruit fly safer? Setoiris (talk) 01:51, 23 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions for GA status

I think that this is a very strong article, but in order to achieve GA status, some additions need to be made. Currently, there is not much information in the “Taxonomy and Phylogeny” section or the “Mimicry” section. I think that additions to the two of these sections would truly benefit the article. I was very interested in the mimicry of this wasp, but I felt as though the description is a little short. These changes should only be made to achieve GA status, otherwise the article looks great! Mhimmelrich (talk) 21:35, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

More Suggestions!

Here are somethings I think you could change in your article to bring it closer to a good article:

Your description section has a lot of scientific words that don’t link to articles, and if you put the words into wiki’s search they don’t turn up anything immediately relevant. You should clarify this language so its more accessible for the reader. One example is “Females also have a clypeus, or head plate, with a truncate apex.” I don’t know what a truncate apex is, and wikipedia isn’t helping me here.

Also, GA descriptions tend to include more information about the morphology of different genders and social castes. Also include differences in morphology between subspecies, if any, since this species has a few.

You can also include more pictures. GA’s tend to make good use of images where helpful. A good place to put a photo is actually the description, which would clarify some of the language in this section.

I added a couple of links: conspecific in the opening paragraph and New World in Taxonomy. If an editor continued linking this article it would bring it closer to GA status.Micah.Steinbrecher (talk) 21:44, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]