Talk:Vespula austriaca

Alex's Comments

This wasp is really cool, especially the description section and the discussion of its venom. I am especially impressed by how well you linked vocabulary to their respective Wikipedia articles – it made your article a lot clearer and more informative. One link I would add, however, is in the first descriptive paragraph, where you mention your wasp is an “obligate parasitic wasp.” I would link that term to the wikipage “obligate parasite.” I would be interested to see you elaborate more on the relevance of the venom section to humans. You list the numerous physiological effects the venom can have on other wasps, but don’t mention anything about what sort of venom it is, what it is composed of, or how it works. Also, is there any literature on how this wasp might have coevolved with the wasps it parasitizes? Why does it prey on those specific wasps? Finally, I added the Wikicourse banner to your talk page. Great job! Ajlu1 (talk) 00:23, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

This was a very thorough, well structured, and interesting article. Like the comments above mine I noticed that you have done a very good job of linking key words and any other confusing terms that might hinder reader's understanding. It does seem like your article focused heavily on the wasp as a predator though. It would be interesting to see what predators prey on such a fierce species of wasp. I also noticed that your wasp species lives in many different parts of the world. Is there any behavioral changes due to different climates? Overall this article was a great read and I enjoyed it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cnemelue (talk • contribs) 22:00, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions

Nice job on this article, I found it very informative. I especially like the nice close-up picture. I made a bunch of minor grammatical edits and added some more links to other pages. Your overview was very informative and it flowed nicely. The description and identification is very detailed. I fixed the femur and tibia links to link to the correct anatomy pages since arthropods don't have bones! A minor thing I noticed was that you repeated the full name of the species way too often so I abbreviated it or replaced it with pronouns in some places. Your article could benefit by adding more details about colony cycle. For example, do other wasps develop defenses against invasion by V. austriaca? In the parasitic behavior section, you ramble on a bit about mandibular muscles. You could summarize this information in a few concise sentences. This section could also be written more clearly with a better flow of ideas. I thought the diet section has some interesting details. When discussing venom, you misnamed Vespula pensylvanica as Polities pensyvlanica because it is referred to as P. pensylvanica in the journal article on venom but this is because it is a member of the subgenus Paravespula which is a subgenus of the Vespula genus. I understand how this is confusing. Overall your article was very comprehensive and well researched, nice job. nef614 (talk) 22:02, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Some suggestions

Hey Eunjae! You should probably split up “Parasitic behavior section” to make two shorter sections, makes it more readable. Also split up “Post-invasion: parasite and host worker interactions” to make two shorter sections as well. This section is gigantic, and includes two substantive paragraphs that you could split it by. You could also split the section “Reproduction” into two shorter sections as well. Nice hook in the beginning about obligate parasitism. Be sure to comb through the article for grammar mistakes if you haven’t already. Compliments on the relevance of your links: you included links to many important concepts and did not have any extraneous or irrelevant links. Try to use more active instead of passive voice. For example, “When dissecting individuals of V. austriaca, it was found that they had larger, sturdier mature muscle bundles in abdominal sterna and tergum than the muscles in a queen of V. acadica.” This could be changed to: “When researchers dissected individuals of V. austriaca, they found that they had larger, studier mature muscle bundles…” In one sentence there are no pronouns: “The parasite displays mauling behavior: grabs the workers with legs and chews on dorsum.” You should insert pronouns by saying instead, “The parasite displays mauling behavior: it grabs the workers with its legs and chews on their dorsums.” You also had a run-on sentence that was also in passive voice: “Furthermore, mauling also occurs post trophallaxis, soliciting and chasing a worker.” It’s not clear what the last clause in that sentence means, but I’m guessing that the parasite solicits and chases a worker to initiate trophallaxis, then mauls it afterward. To state this more clearly and in active voice, I would rephrase it as “Furthermore, the parasite also displays mauling behavior after trophallaxis, which it initiates by soliciting and chasing the worker.” Great job on italicizing all genus and species names. But you still have a lot of grammar errors, such as leaving out the “rather” in “rather than” in the phrase, “the parasite will remain inside the nest than help the workers defend it.” I’ve gone ahead and fixed all the grammar mistakes that I commented on here. Carzhong (talk) 00:41, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Interocular

V. austriaca also has a wider interocular (space between the centers of rotation of the eyeballs) distance

Wasps don't have rotating eyeballs, and the link is to a page about snakes. How is the interocular distance of a wasp defined? phma (talk) 13:34, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

North America?

Overall a nice article. Thank you for that. i have found sources stating this species is found in North America, mostly Canada, with some also in northern parts of USA. have these been reviewed and disproved as a different/new species? Main source that i can site is page 46 of the USDA Handbook number 552 The Yellowjackets of America North of Mexico, 1981, written by R.Akre, A. Greene, J.F. MacDonald, P.J. Landolt, and H. G. Davis. 1981 was a while ago, and molecular identification can be used now, so maybe this is a mis-identified species. Any thoughts? Bikepoloplayer (talk) 16:42, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Those are outdated and inaccurate sources. As explained in the article, all of those records refer to V. infernalis, not austriaca. Dyanega (talk) 17:55, 30 October 2024 (UTC)