Talk:Aleochara bilineata

Wiki Education assignment: Behavioral Ecology 2024

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 25 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jaden.l17 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: MiJiEm.

— Assignment last updated by MidnightBarber (talk) 22:05, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Life cycle

I noticed that none of your sentences in the life cycle section of the article have in-text citations. Was this an accident or is there no reference where you got this information from? MiJiEm (talk) 21:54, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Lead section

Your lead section does not do a good job of presenting the main information regarding your beetle. It seems like a brief summary of what the rove beetle is, but it doesn't include any of the interesting facts discussed later in the article, like how these beetles can recognize their kin. If you add more to your lead section, you may then be able to take some of the information, like about habitat and prey, and make new sections for them. MiJiEm (talk) 21:59, 19 March 2024 (UTC)==

Article feedback

I enjoyed reading this article about the rove beetle. An interesting fact that I took away from this article is that these beetles are grown in human labs to be used as biological control agents against flies. I appreciated detailed facts about this beetle, such as when it was first discovered, and the description of its eggs and larva. One thing that could strengthen this article is ensuring that citations are included at the end of every paragraph. Such as the end of the physical appearance, biocontrol, life cycle, oviposition, and altruism sections, there are no citations. Although it is fine to leave citations out in the middle of a paragraph when they all come from one source as long as it is included at least once (or more for longer sections), it is important to have at least one citation at the end of each paragraph so readers know where the last stated fact can be referenced to. I appreciate the many topics that this article discussed about the behavior of the rove beetle, such as infochemicals, altruism, oviposition, and parasitism. If it is possible to find additional information, this article can be strengthened by discussing behavior during mating, its habitat, and food sources. Lastly, please make sure to add citations in the life cycle section and the second paragraph of the physical appearance section

Here are some edits that I have made:

• Moving the biocontrol section to the end of the article so that it matches the template used for beetle articles
• Broke up a large paragraph in the physical appearance into two smaller sections to help with the structure of the article.
• Added hyperlinks to integrate articles within Wikipedia
• Added picture of rove beetle larva to increase media content
• Removed citations of the same source in back-to-back sentences from the same reference to reduce clutter.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this piece and thought that the prose was very clear and neutral. Justinxuje (talk) 12:36, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Peer Review

Hi! Overall, I really enjoyed this article. I thought it covered a nice variety of topics. I particularly enjoyed the "Parasitism" and "Altruism" sections, and they seem especially relevant to our course content. I also thought the pictures were great and very informative (although it seems one of these was added by another peer reviewer).

I did have a few suggestions on possible things you could do to improve this article:

1. You are missing citations in many areas. I noted the following citations are missing: The last sentence in the introduction, the second paragraph in the “Physical appearance” section, the entire “Life cycle” section, the last three sentences in the “Oviposition” subsection, and the last paragraph in “Altruism” section.
2. This article would also benefit from the addition of a "Geographic Distribution" and/or "Habitat" section.
3. The image next to the "Behavior" section needs a caption.
4. The information about how this species is used for biological pest control is a little short. I would consider adding more information on the particular crops that this species is used for, and in what regions of the world it is done in.

I have made the following changes:

1. I changed the sentence “Aleochara bilineata is a rove beetle” to “Aleochara bilineata is a species of rove beetle” to better reflect its this species relationship to its broader taxa.
2. I fixed the spelling of “catepillars” to “caterpillars”.
3. I changed the following sentence: “It is used by humans as crop pest control due to the variety of pests it consumes, including catepillars, mealybugs, mites, maggots, and other insects.” to “It is used by humans as crop pest control due to the variety of pests it consumes, including caterpillars, mealybugs, mites, and maggots". I cut the ending "and other insects" to reduce redundancy, since "including" already implies there are others not listed.

Great job on the article! E.a.eslinger (talk) 21:12, 21 March 2024 (UTC)