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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 13:58, 8 June 2010 [1].

Transandinomys talamancae

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Transandinomys talamancae (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Ucucha 11:28, 22 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This rice rat from Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador is the closest relative of Transandinomys bolivaris, which just became an FA. It doesn't have whiskers as striking as that species, but for once we do actually know a fair bit about its biology. I am looking forward to all reviews. Ucucha 11:28, 22 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support' comments Comments are all addressed. Auntieruth55 (talk) 16:24, 24 May 2010 (UTC) ah, the promised rat with the long whiskers.[reply]

Transandinomys bolivaris is the real long-whiskered rice rat—this is just its slightly less accomplished sister.
  • Lead. populations, which are now considered synonyms. populations? or names....
      • Was intended to refer to "names"; now clarified.
    • first sentence is pretty long
      • Split.
    • above, below. Do you mean back and sides are reddish brown, and belly is buff to white?
      • Yes, clarified a little.
    • After a gestation period of about 28 days, two to five young are born,... Two to five young are born after a gestation of about 28 days and they reach sexual maturity....? Or, animals reach sexual maturity at ... and after a gestation period of about 28 days, two to five young are born..... (might be chicken and egg argument).
      • Can't really see the problem here; neither wording seems superior over another.
        • right. It's a chicken/egg argument.
  • Taxonomy
    • The species remained lumped under Oryzomys capito until 1983... wish there was another way to say it was "lumped with miscellaneous rats under Oryzomys capito until...
      • I don't really see a problem with the current wording here.
        • Lumped is so inelegant.
    • should Talamanca Costa Rica be linked?
      • Talamanca has multiple meanings, and the one intended here (fide Musser et al., 1998, who discuss it) is a village that doesn't seem to be anywhere on Wikipedia.
    • Question: do these critters interbreed (when geographically possible)?
      • Not that we know. It has ample opportunity to interbreed with T. bolivaris, but there are no records of it. Hylaeamys megacephalus and Hylaeamys perenensis come close to its range, but are not known to quite reach it, so it's not possible.
  • Description
    • They are about as large.... They are similar in size to the...?
      • Why? The wording there is seems more simple.
    • but in T. talamancae the tail is longer and the hindfeet shorter... but the T. Talamancae have longer tails and shorter hindfeet?
      • I can't see how that is better than what is there.
    • sparsely haired... there's a better way to say that. But I don't know what it is. The tail is almost as long as the head, with little hair; the hair it has is brown on top and white underneath...?
      • It's not necessarily the hair that gives the color, and I don't see the problem with "sparsely haired"; it's not an unprecedented way to describe rice rat tails (Weksler et al., 2006, p. 3, also use it), and it doesn't seem overly technical to me.
  • skipping to reproduction, the last sentence before you list all the parasites, where Fleming estimates age, etc. That is reaaallllllly long with a lot of ands.
    • Changed an "and" into a semicolon.
  • more later. Oh, I made a couple of minor tweaks. If I messed it up, please forgive me and revert. Auntieruth55 (talk) 00:04, 23 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

  • Foreign language sources should be identified (Linares? Tinra?)
  • Wexler: the bulletin number is 296 not 196 (how's that for due diligence?)
  • Otherwise, all sources look good, no further issues.

Brianboulton (talk) 12:00, 23 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Added "in Spanish" for those two. Also fixed the number of Weksler 2006, here and on all other pages with this mistake. Thanks a lot for catching that. Can I blame it on the fact that the copy of the paper I always use has lost the cover page? I also noticed that Weksler's own page in fact has the same mistake. Ucucha 12:23, 23 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support and three comments. You're getting these down to a fine art, but three quibbles

  • I've been to Talamance, how come I missed this (:  ?
  • except for one record from the far northwest (in Guanacaste Province) — Does one record justify the mapping shown?
    • Yes; rodents are not like birds which can just get lost while flying about, so when someone finds a rat somewhere, it means the area is part of the distribution. Musser et al. (1998, p. 157) also explicitly say the distribution starts in northwestern Costa Rica.
  • Marine mammals can swim about, and sea lions in particular are common in captivity; neither is true for rice rats. Thanks for supporting. Ucucha 15:12, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Specimens that were once captured tend to be captured more frequently than those that have never been captured — Any significance or explanation?
    • Fixed the tense of that sentence. I recall that it complicated population estimates in Fleming's study, but I think we can just keep it as a fact from their biology. Why it is so, Fleming didn't say. Ucucha 07:12, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:35, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for reviewing. Ucucha 07:12, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - by Sasata (talk) 04:58, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the thorough review. Ucucha 06:35, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reid 2009 is not listed in "Literature cited"
    • Added.
  • " Its habitat consists of lowland forests up to 1525 m (5000 ft) above sea level." What's a lowland forest? Does this refer to its elevation? Is this the Talamancan montane forests?
    • Well, lowland forests are in the lowlands; isn't that apparent? It doesn't occur in montane forest; there we've got Nephelomys devius.
  • link braincase; why not use the simpler "whiskers" for the lead (and perhaps pipe a link to vibrissae)?
    • Done, and glossed "vibrissae" (I prefer to use that term because it occurs more in the sources).
  • "T. talamancae lives on the ground" avoid abbreviations at start of paragraph
    • Fixed.
  • "Males move more and have larger home ranges than females." Do the 1st three words mean the males are less sedentary (just seems a bit odd to me)?
    • Yes, that's pretty common in animals. Males move around to find females.
  • worthwhile to link home range, gestation, parasites, sexual maturity, and conservation concern?
    • Linked everything except the last, which has nothing to link to.
  • last paragraph of lead is rather choppy, could use a bit of polish prose-wise
    • Rewrote a little.
  • link Talamanca
    • It's unclear what the Talamanca here refers to (discussed in Musser et al. 1998), and it's most likely a village that is apparently not mentioned on Wikipedia, so I kept it unlinked.
  • redlink Alfred Gardner; link Guy Musser
    • Yes, Gardner deserves an article, and I don't know why I didn't link to his article.
  • "... using morphological and DNA sequence data." based on what gene(s)?
    • IRBP, added.
  • "...but is not known to overlap with T. talamancae." overlap in range?
    • Yes, added.
  • "The fur is short, dense and soft;" clarify what species we're talking about here; the end of the previous paragraph mentions a bunch of rats
    • T. talamancae, added.
  • "... bases of the hairs plumbeous in color." I appreciate the wikt link, but maybe gloss as well so I don't have to open a new page to find out what this word means
    • lead-colored, added.
  • link molt
    • Done.
  • no-one bothered to measure the Ecuadorian's rat's ears??
    • Apparently. Measurements are usually taken in the field, because preserved skins may shrink or do other weird things, and the people who collected the sample in Ecuador apparently had a protocol that did not include measuring the ears.
  • "additional pair of supernumerary ribs is occasionally present." super-what?
    • Extra pair. In sigmodontines, such supernumerary ribs don't articulate with the vertebrae if I understand correctly.
  • "Both Robertsonian translocations and pericentric inversions are needed to explain the difference between the two groups." Since there is a fair bit of discussion about differences in karyotype, I don't think it would be out of place to have a sentence or two to explain what these fancy words are
    • Added.
  • "It is a forest species and occurs in both evergreen and deciduous forest." If you want, you could pipe these directly to the more specific coniferous forest and deciduous forest (I'm assuming if the reader's made it this far, they know what evergreen and deciduous mean)
    • Linked to the forest articles (not coniferous, but evergreen forest—tropical forests are often evergreen even though they don't contain a lot of conifers).
  • "In the laboratory, the gestation period is 28 days;[97] Linares reports that it is 20 to 30 days." 20-30 in the lab or in the wild?
    • In the wild, added.
vibrissae - I'd link or explain this in the lead.
It is both linked and explained. Ucucha 04:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Should Talamanca link to Cordillera de Talamanca?
Everyone asks this. :-) The problem is that "Talamanca" has several meanings and the one meant here is a small village that does not appear in Wikipedia. Ucucha 04:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The variation in chromosome count I found intriguing. Is that unusual?
It's strongly suggestive that there are multiple species within what we now call T. talamancae. But polymorphism within a single species is not unusual in rodents. Ucucha 04:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Conservation status section is stubby - if there is anything at all that can be added that'd be very helpful (any confirmation that numbers appear to be constant/increasing etc. no threats from intriduced spp.) if not never mind.
There's nothing else I could find. The only things that could perhaps be added are some further ways from the IUCN to say "it's fine"—the Red List account also says no conservation measures are needed and the population is stable. Ucucha 04:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, just tiny quibbles and a hair's breadth from being over the line. Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:14, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for reviewing; I've answered above. Ucucha 04:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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