Talk:Synoeca surinama

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 Synoeca surinama appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 3 December 2014 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the sting of Synoeca surinama wasps is used in defense and contains the neurotransmitter serotonin to induce vasoconstriction and pain?

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/Synoeca surinama.

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Edits

This article has a lot of great information and is very well organized. First of all, I removed the critique at the top of your article that said your general description did not have enough information in it because I think you provided a great summary of what appears in your article. I made a few changes to your writing, including fixing a few spelling and grammar mistakes and editing your word choice in a few places to make it easier to understand. In addition, I added a few links throughout your article to outside Wikipedia pages. I also put the course banner and the Insect Project Banner on your talk page. I would also suggest adding a picture of your species when you get a chance. Great job! Katieortman (talk) 22:20, 21 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Some Suggestions

Overall, I found this article to be high quality and well-written. I particularly liked how detailed you were throughout; I really felt like I had a complete understanding of the Synoeca surinama after reading your article. There were some formatting issues with your article where some text appeared to be bigger than others, so I fixed that. In addition, I changed all of your heading to be capitalized appropriately so that they all matched. I also have several suggestions about the content of your article. Firstly, I would remove the section on male presence. The only real information you are giving are different times in the colony cycle when males are observed. Therefore, this doesn't need to be a standalone section. Instead, this information is better suited for the colony cycle section. In addition, I think this article could be strengthened by adding some definitions throughout your article instead of just giving descriptions. For example, you included two sections on swarming behavior, but you never actually defined what swarming is. For the average reader who doesn't understand what this term means, including a definition will help them have a more complete understanding of your wasp. Finally, I think this article could be strengthened by adding to your section on pollination. You only mention one species of plant that Synoeca surinama pollinate and I think it would be useful to mention other species or types of species this wasp pollinates. While this article is already strong, I hope adding these suggesting will improve it even more. Amanda.Kalupa (talk) 11:13, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments! I rearranged the structure of the Colony cycle section so that it would include the information about male presence. I also added a description of what swarming behavior is at the beginning of that section. Lastly, I added pictures! Hopefully these changes make the article more digestible for readers. Rey_ks

Edits

This article is very extensive and interesting to read. The information is presented clearly and in an organized manner. The citations were done very well and there were little to no grammatical errors, but I made a couple of changes to word choice to make some sections flow better. The page would benefit greatly by having some pictures of the wasp and also if more information were included on colony cycle, like the average colony size, etc. The section on swarming behavior was particularly interesting, but I believe the Reasons to Swarm and Pre-Swarming Behavior sections could be condensed into one. --Tgalosher (talk) 16:11, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]