Talk:Myrmecophyte

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

Nominator: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 09:42, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Reconrabbit (talk · contribs) 16:56, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello, I'm starting in on this review. Further comments and source review to come. Reconrabbit 16:56, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks! Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:43, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

All clear as I see it, well done Reconrabbit 15:30, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Comments

• Domatia, when it is linked early in the article, links to a section later on. However, Domatium exists, and Myrmecodomatia also redirects there, but there aren't any links in this article.

  Linked in lead and in body.

• Most ant inhabitants of Cecropia plants harvest the last type of food body, as their primary food source Could generate some confusion if this is meant to refer to Müllerian bodies, since the previous sentence also mentions "pearl bodies".

  Good catch. Made it explicit.

• The word egesta could be linked to Wiktionary or otherwise clarified/linked to egestion since it's infrequently encountered. Though I don't know if many people will wonder about the ant city of the Elymians.

  Linked. I've been to Segesta, never heard it abbreviated before!

• I have a concern over the weight applied in the section "Ants feeding plants" to Chanam et al. in a primary research paper, albeit one published in a high-impact journal. Dejean et al. cites the 2014 paper by Chanam et al and provides additional generalized and specific information on myrmecotrophy, though it's another primary source, and Nathan et al. published a more review-like paper in 2023 that also cites it, though this one is more focused on seed dispersal and other means of mutualism than myrmecotrophy. They could be of use in broadening the sources of information on this aspect.

  Yes, it was a bit long: I've trimmed it by half to be no longer than other subsections, added an image, and cited Dejean.

References

• Layout: Templating is consistent, and typical of WP:PLANTS articles.

Spot checking

I only have full access to 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13 and 15 where I am right now. Based on this revision:

• [5]: the ant is dependent upon the acacia for food and domicile, and the acacia is dependent upon the ant for protection from phytophagous insects and neighboring plants. [...] The ant-acacia system represents this latter extreme, and the acacia is by any definition a myrmecophyte. [...] workers attack any other insects on the acacia and normally are successful in driving them off by biting and stinging (see Table 6). They also attack (mauling with mandibles) any living foreign plants Y
• [8]: FBs, or "Beltian bodies" [...] proteins and lipids were much higher in FBs of all five species than in the leaves Y
• [9]: Nonsymbiotic ants were investigated at two sites (coast and isthmus), and the specialized Acacia inhabitants (P. ferrugineus and P. mixtecus) were investigated on Acacia collinsii shrubs. Bars represent means + SE. The numbers of ants attracted to nectar with and without added sucrose differed significantly [...] the enzymatic activity involved in postsecretory regulation of nectar carbohydrate composition must have been greatly intensified during the evolution of these species' life history. This adaptation allows plants to present a valuable food source to their resident mutualists that will seldom be exploited by unspecialized competitors. Y
• [10]: Obligate myrmecophytes are inhabited by specialised ants [...] ant preferences to sugars and amino acids may vary among ant species according to their nutritive needs and particularly among functionally different types of mutualisms [...] for generalist ants, just the presence of amino acids in the nectar but not their detailed identity is important, while symbiotic ants are much more selective. Describes the phenomenon in the text, but not the specific example (which is described in [9]). Y
• [13]: Prey are consumed under the peristome (pitcher rim) where the ants spend most of their time; the undigested remains, as well as the ants' feces, are eventually dropped into the pitcher fluid Y
• [15]: Describes myrmecotrophy in detail; primary source, but supplemented now by Dejean. Y

Copied material

• There is some overlap with Ants and plants: a very natural love story at Kew.org, which is probably the result of the author of that article copying the main points of this article as it appeared in 2018.

Scope

• Broad: The causes, mechanisms and consequences of myrmecophily in plants are laid out in a manner that doesn't exclude any obvious information presented in sources.
• Narrow: Examples are provided of the broader behaviors, structural adaptations of, and interactions involving specific myrmecophytes.

Stability

• Neutrality: Particular weight to be addressed in comment above.
• Edit warring: None noted.

Images

• Licenses: CC-BY-SA and Public Domain licenses used for all photos with clear author attribution on Commons.
• Relevance: Images are placed where appropriate to the text to demonstrate a specific feature or interaction, and illustrate the specific species/genus provided as example when possible, without overwhelming the formatting of the page.

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

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.