Talk:Pachysentis/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 14:08, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:08, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Sources are reliable.

• File:Pachysentis lenti.jpg and File:Pachysentis lauroi.png come from here; as far as I can tell from this page Springer has no global CC 4.0 release, so what's the basis for the given licence?

  The specific journal this was taken from is open access, and has Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Is this not appropriate?

  That's fine -- I just couldn't find the page that shows the CC 4.0 licence. Can you give me the link? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:15, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

  It's actually in the link in wikicommons [1], just have to scroll down but the aforementioned CC4.0 is there. Mattximus (talk) 20:34, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

  Yep, missed that -- thanks. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:33, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

• "The eleven species (however, P. septemserialis has an uncertain taxonomic status) in this genus are distributed across Africa and the Americas." Awkwardly phrased. How about "There are ten species definitely included in this genus; a possible eleventh species, P. septemserialis, is of uncertain taxonomic status. The species are distributed across Africa and the Americas." The first sentence of the "Species" section needs a similar rephrasing.

  Rephrased by breaking into two sentences as suggested, removed however in both cases, replaced with although which I think solves the grammar issues?

• Not a GA issue, but given note [b] I wonder if it might be better to add another subhead, "Measurements applying to both sexes", and eliminate the duplicate rows. It would shorten the table, which wouldn't hurt.

  Good suggestion but I think taking data way from the female table and putting it below the male table in it's own third table would make comparisons difficult between species.

  Fair enough. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:15, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

• "The type species is P. canicola." Since the preceding sentence is about Oncicola, suggest making this "The type species for Pachysentis is P. canicola."

  Done

• "The proboscis of Pachysentis species are not quite spherical and contains 42 to 102 hooks arranged into 12 longitudinal rows 3 to 12 hooks each." Verb number mismatch; "proboscis" is singular, so "is" and "contain", unless this should be "probosces", which is probably better since we're talking about multiple species.

  Done

• "The species is named after the Latin word for dog (canis), as it parasitizes animals of the family Canidae" is unsourced.

• Indeed. This is certainly true, and I have a reference to the text of the original description in which is is almost certainly written. Because it is from 1931 and not available online as far as I can tell, I have not be able to confirm this. However I will link the original paper that described this species as it is better than unsourced. I could also link it to the wikitionary entry that says canicola refers to dogs? Personally I am happy with the original description.

  I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that although you don't have access to the original paper (footnote 1, here) you are citing it because logically it must contain this information? We would have to actually get a copy of the paper to cite it. Per WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT we need to cite the source that we actually consulted, not the source that is cited in what we read. That also means that if the source you have access to doesn't say "canis" is taken from the Latin for "dog", we can't say that. And am I right in thinking that this also applies to the two other unstruck comments below? Mike Christie (talk contribs - library) 22:07, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

• Originally yes this is what I thought, it must logically contain this information. However after going through the others, I now doubt this information exists anywhere as etymologies that are simply descriptions may not be published (in this case canicola literally means dog in Latin, and it infects dogs). I have specific evidence of this below where there is a paper describing the discovery of many of the pachysensis species which gives an etymology for all of them except for the obvious ones. What do you think? One possible solution is to link to the latin, and say "The species name canicola is Latin for canine, the host for this species" or something like thatMattximus (talk) 18:23, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

• What about this wording? "The species name canicola is the Latin word for canine which is the type of creature (family Canidae) that this species infests.". This statement is worded carefully to be a factual statement which does not need a source, although source is provided for the implicit etymology. Mattximus (talk) 14:33, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

• "The species is named after the 19th century biologist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg." Unsourced.

• Similar to above, this is almost certainly true as many parasites are named after this individual. I will again link the original description despite my inability to locate this text.Mattximus (talk) 21:33, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

• "It is named after Herman Lent [pt], a Brazilian parasitologist." Unsourced.

• Different from above, I do have a link to the text but with no search function and being in a language I cannot read, I do not have the specific page reference. I will add the citation regardless.

• Scratch that, citation found and linked, it's on page 534. Mattximus (talk) 22:31, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

• "referring to the method the parasite must use to attach itself using hooks to the intestines of the host." Unsourced.

• Same issue as the other Meyer 1931 above. Added citation for completion.

• The wiktionary link to manubrium is unhelpful; I see no relevant definition there.

• Removed link, but I do not know exactly what this refers to either but it's used in multiple citations.

  I'm very uncomfortable with promoting an article with a word neither the nominator nor reviewer understands. Can you perhaps ask at a relevant wikiproject, or dig up a definition from other papers? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:56, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

• I found multiple definitions but I can't be certain which one it is, shall I simply delete this from the article? Mattximus (talk) 18:24, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

  I think you should consider withdrawing the nomination, to be honest. I don't understand the term any more than you do; between the two of us, how can we know what's important to the description and what isn't? If we omit that part, are we omitting something that an expert would consider a required part of the genus? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:30, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

• Various parasites have a "spicule" whose head is called a "manubrium". In vertebrates, the term "manubrium" is used for the head of a bone, such as the sternum. The general meaning is an enlarged lump at one end of something, providing a handle or knob, which was the original meaning in Latin. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:09, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks; very helpful! You seem to know more about this topic than I do; what do you think would be a sufficient citation for us to provide a definition for the word? Or do you think it would be better to drop the word, in which case what would be an acceptable paraphrase? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:27, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

• Why not just say "complex heads (manubria) ...", etc? Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:22, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

  That works for me. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:41, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

• "each with single giant nucleus": should this be "each with a single giant nucleus"?

• Done

• For P. canicola the three sentences all of the form "... was also found infesting ..." are ugly. Can we make the list of species a single sentence, cited at the end? And was the rattlesnake an intermediate host here?

• Oh wow, that was terribly organized. I've rearranged it as you requested, good suggestion. Mattximus (talk) 21:24, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Spotchecks:

• FN 2 cites "P. procumbens has been found infesting the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) in Argo, Egypt. The proboscis has 90 hooks without barbs arranged into six rows of seven hooks followed by six rows of eight hooks." Verified.
• FN 16 cites "The species is named after the genus of the host Procyon it was found infesting." This is a long paper; can you point me at the page in the paper that supports this?

• It took a while to figure out, but the etymology is listed for every species in this reference, except for those that are tautological. I did a spot check myself on this reference and found another of the etymologies (for P. Lenti) on page 534. For the species in question (page 523-524), the etymology was not listed as it's obvious to the reader. The species infests procyon, so it's named procyon. This is actually good news because it means if it's not in the original description, there is no source for the explicit origin of the name. This is true for other tautological etymologies, but not for those that use proper names (see lenti above), or require explanation (see p. septemserialis). Hope this explains your question. Mattximus (talk) 22:31, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

• FN 13 cites "P. canicola was also found infesting the golden jackal, (Canis aureus) in Iran." Verified.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:22, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I have addressed all your comments Mike Christie, if there is ambiguity I've asked a follow up question. Thank you for the excellent review, it was very thorough. Thorough enough I may bring this to Featured Article Nomination once we are done. I will await your responses to my questions. Mattximus (talk) 22:31, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Mattximus, a couple of replies are inline above. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:20, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Mike Christie - Replied to both above with some ideas. Thanks! Mattximus (talk) 18:46, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

I've replied to one point above. I have a similar concern about the other point but will wait till you've responded. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:50, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Mattximus, are you still planning on working on this? I'd hate to fail this for inactivity; we're pretty close to the finish line here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:20, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Yep, just busy at work this week. I agree with the suggestion above and have made the change. Mattximus (talk) 14:01, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

What's left

With the "manubrium" issue fixed, there a couple of other issues left from the above notes. If I understand your comments correctly, you have added citations in a couple of places that logically should address the question I asked, but which you don't currently have access to. That's these sentences:

• "referring to the method the parasite must use to attach itself using hooks to the intestines of the host."
• ""The species is named after the 19th century biologist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg."

Both the above are cited to Meyer 1931, the original description. Is that correct? If so, I'll post a request at WP:RX for the paper; I don't think I can promote without the source being seen, but RX is a good place to get access to this sort of thing.

• Second, the question of whether we can source ""The species is named after the Latin word for dog (canis), as it parasitizes animals of the family Canidae" is unsettled. You say above you think this may not be sourceable. If so I think we should cut it. I can see that it's a natural, even obvious, deduction, but without a source I think we should leave the reader in the same position we ourselves are in, and let them make the same deduction we make.

These are the last two items before I can pass this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:02, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

Great thanks! I may take a bit of time to finish this off due to work but I will try to get it all done next weekend. Mattximus (talk) 00:45, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I've posted the request, here; I'll let you know when the article is available. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:44, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Mattximus, I've received a copy of the article. If you send me an email via the "email this user" link on my user page, I'll reply with the paper. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:31, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

First, thank you for the paper. You have 3 outstanding questions above. For the first two, I've confirmed my original suspicion, that the etymology is not explicit when it's redundant (or obvious). I converted the paper to OCR and used google translate to confirm. This is consistent with the other etymologies where an explanation is given when there is some ambiguity. Since, in their view, the etymology is obvious, they did not include it. This means it can't be properly sourced explicitly, only implicitly. But does the source need to be explicit if the authors deem it obvious and thus implicit? For example, if the species is named canidae and it infests canidae, I can understand why the authors didn't write that explicitly.

That's a reasonable question. Pinging FunkMonk, who writes biological articles, for an opinion. FunkMonk, would you mind taking a look at the two points above and at Mattximus's comments? I don't want to promote this to GA without a source for these statements, but I understand Mattximus's point that these two things may be completely obvious to experts in the field. Have you seen an issue like this come up in other biology articles? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:51, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll try to have a look soon. FunkMonk (talk) 15:03, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

For the third, I have a creative solution posted above. What do you think? Mattximus (talk) 14:30, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

I think that would work, but I would suggest citing both the Latin definition and the source that gives canids as the infected species. I have a Latin dictionary around here somewhere if you can't find a good online source. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:51, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good. I linked to the wiktionary page for canicola, which says it's derived from the Latin for dog, which I believe works, but I'm also happy to use any dictionary you recommend. Mattximus (talk) 18:53, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Works for me. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:09, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

• If I understand these issues correctly, if the sources used don't explicitly explain an etymology, I would either leave it out, or find a general taxonomic etymology source that backs it up, like for example this[2] one I've used some times. As it seems some sources that may contain some answers have been requested, I'd either wait until these are received before promoting, or remove the unsourced etymologies for now so the article can be promoted. FunkMonk (talk) 18:50, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks, FunkMonk. Pachysentis, I would suggest removing the etymology statements so I can promote; you can re-add them when you find sources. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:09, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

  Mattximus, a nudge. If you remove those two short phrases, I can promote this. Or are you looking for other sources to support them? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:40, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

  Still trying to find some reference but no luck. It would be a shame to eliminate the etymology of this species, but if it is required, I've eliminated "The species is named after the 19th century biologist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg.". The other has etymology now attached (I didn't notice who insterted it), so likely does not require removal, would this be correct? Mattximus (talk) 02:05, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

  The source attached to "referring to the method the parasite must use to attach itself using hooks to the intestines of the host" is just Meyer 1931, which I think you already said does not actually support this? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:04, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

  Oh I see, the etymology was added by some kind editor to the middle of the sentence instead of the end, I can move it, and replace the source which you correctly said did not contain the etymology (despite being the author to conceived of this name). Would that work? Mattximus (talk) 01:10, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

  Sorry, I think that doesn't quite work. As a matter of fact I don't think we can treat etymonline.com as a reliable source -- I should have noticed it before when I reviewed the sources, but per this page it's a one-person operation. That doesn't really matter for this discussion, though, since the etymology of "procumbent" is not controversial, and the Latin does, I'm sure, mean what that source has it. We'd have to change the source if we want to keep the sentence in the article, but another source could certainly be found -- e.g. I have an OED downstairs and it'll be in that. The issue that I think is still present is that we say the name refers to the parasite's method of attaching itself to the host. The etymology can't support that without another source to say that was Meyer's intention. I hate to be a pain about this, but I really think the best thing to do is just to cut the sentence, pass this as a GA, and then if you come across a clear statement in a source somewhere making the connection, re-add the sentence with that source. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:44, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

• I see what you are saying, I reluctantly deleted the inference, but I kept the Latin translation to match several other incidences of Latin and linked to wikitionary. I also removed the questionable reference you noted for the etymology. Also, it's not that you should have noticed it before, it was added after your review by an unknown editor. Thanks for your thorough review! Let me know if this form works. Mattximus (talk) 17:46, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

  We do still need a citation, so I used the shorter OED; and I don't think we can say directly it was based on that Latin word, so I got around it by simply saying that the name is a form of the Latin word, which is true and supported by the etymology given in the OED. If that looks OK to you I can go ahead and promote. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:30, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

• I'll accept that, thanks for walking me through this strange citation issue! Mattximus (talk) 02:21, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

  OK, passing. We got there in the end! Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:07, 8 May 2023 (UTC)