Talk:Polistes pacificus

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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.

Feedback[edit]

I included the course banner on the talk page so that readers would know that this article was created as a student assignment. I removed the orphan banner at the top of the talk page because I included internal links within the text of the article. Adding several internal links throughout the article would increase the number of views of the page. I also linked words that were not explicitly defined so that readers could learn more about those body parts or descriptions. In the future, I would recommend using Wikipedia Citation Template to cite your sources. This may make the process of citing easier than the method you used.

The “Synonyms” subsection of Taxonomy and phylogenetics is difficult to read. I would recommend either rearranging the structure of this section or eliminating it from the page. I would also recommend using a different method to describe the morphology of P. pacificus than including all 48 criteria. I think that this long list is cumbersome and takes away from the quality of this paper. With those things in mind, I think this was an overall good article. I specifically liked the Human importance section, which details how humans have interacted with P. pacificus and the cultural significance. This article goes beyond the scope of animal behavior in a positive way. Sydney Joyner (talk) 20:14, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I went back and re-wrote the Synonyms section as well as the Morphology section. In addition, I added diagrams of insect anatomy to help the reader understand some of the more jargony terms. Rey_ks

Amy Krause (talk) 30 September 2014 (UTC) Overall, very good article touching on a wide range of the wasps. On the phylogeny section I changed the wording of a sentence and took out a list converting it to a sentence. Additionally I removed the synonyms list and turned it into a sentence. It is important to not include lists in the article but instead work on structure sentences to better depict what you are trying to explain. This can include more about how Fabricus discovered the species and where he discovered them. Also it can explain the unique traits of the clade that it is associated with.

Also you need to improve your description and identification section. The wording of almost every sentence uses a lot of confusing jargon making it hard to understand the description of the wasp. The section of defined morphological criteria is also a bit-overwhelming try to slim it down to the most important features of the species. If you can cut down and consolidate this section into a paragraph instead of lists then it will make the page a lot more user friendly. Also try to link words that people may not know like setae, clypeal apex vs clypeal dorsum etc. Also be careful with the lists on the geographic distribution. In general a few of the sections particularly the predators and lack of visual signaling could have used more information. Expanding on each of these sections would help to deepen the understanding about the wasp.

Three is me (talk) 04:13, 3 October 2014 (UTC) Your article is very well-written and I really like your sections about the human-wasp interactions. I reworded a couple of sentences that sounded a bit choppy, and I fixed a couple of grammatical mistakes. I also linked your article to the pages of the genii of the flowers that you mentioned. If possible, it would be nice if you could expand on the effects of the venom that the wasps have. Explain in more detail how the sting affects humans. I also agree that your description of the wasps does use a lot of confusing sentences and might benefit from a bit more explanation. Overall, great job![reply]

Some suggestions[edit]

This article is very well-written, easy to understand, and I appreciate the colorful images that really help the readers to visualize what they are reading about (but it would be nice to have an actual image of the wasp!). Generally speaking, there were some sentences that I found a bit awkward, so I made some changes to make those sentences a little bit more concise and succinct. There were also some typos here and there throughout the article so I edited them as well. Additionally, there were a lot of unnecessary, way-too-general links to the a lot of the words in the article. For instance, in the "Overview" section, South America, Venezuela, Columbia, and North America were all linked, and i got rid of all those wikipedia links because I thought they were way too abroad to add anything substantial to the article. On a similar note, in the "Geographic distribution" subsection, all the countries listed in it were linked, so I got rid of the all the links as well. The one problem that I have with this article is that it doesn't really have much information on the specific behaviors of this species. For example, what is its mating behavior like? Are there any dominance hierarchy/ division of labor/ reproductive suppression? Also, is there any kin selection going on in the colonies of this species? I really do like that you go in to detail on interesting subjects like human importance and communication, but I feel like the article would be more complete with a detailed account of the species' characteristic behavioral traits. JackieOh0223 (talk) 02:46, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]