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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. |
Peer Review
editThis article provided a solid introduction to Polistes humilis. I fixed several grammatical errors, such as run-on sentences. I reworded multiple sentences to make them clearer. Several times throughout the article, the word “theirs” was used to refer to a “species”, so I changed all of these “theirs” to “its” (plural and singular noun inconsistencies). I also fixed some spelling and capitalization errors. I also added a hyperlink to the term “oophagy” in the “worker queen conflict” section, as most readers may not be aware of what “oophagy” is. Within the “dominance hierarchy” section, it states that there are no morphological differences between worker and dominant females and that “behavioral characteristics are the primary determinate of whether a female reproduces or not.” It would be useful if you could expand and be more specific as to what these behavioral characteristics are. For example, is it because dominant females can be more aggressive and thus obtain more food from returning foragers? Within the “genetic relatedness within colonies” section, it states that the haplodiploidy ratio is often “skewed by having multiple queens in a nest”. It would be helpful for the reader if you could specify how this ratio is skewed (are nestmates more related or less related?) Also, some clarification about how a skewed relatedness ratio could disrupt the eusocial behavior within the nest would also be helpful. When reading through articles relating to Polistes humilis, I found one entitled “Nutrients in Social Wasp (Hymenoptera: Vespidae, Polistinae) Honey” by Hunt, Rossi, Holmberg, Smith, and Sherman that found interestingly that the honey of Polistes humilis contained diverse amino acids. This could prove to be a potentially interesting addition to your “human importance” section. Diana He (talk) 21:52, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
Peer Review
editThis article was very well written and interesting. I only made a few minor edits. I added a few links, fixed a couple of grammatical mistakes and made it so references that were used multiple times in a row would only be listed once at the end and were not in the middle of sentences. There was also a mistake in the taxonomy section that said the genus was Polisini (this is the tribe) and Polistes is the genus, which I corrected. I also have a couple of suggestions. I would suggest adding an explanation or link for what mesosternal is in the Description and identification section. Also, in the colony section it would be nice to have specific months listed instead of just saying spring or fall, if possible. I do agree with the other review that it would be helpful to add more explanation in the genetic section to expand on the idea of the ratio skew and the eusocial behavior. Ashleyearley (talk) 20:48, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
Peer Review
editGreat work on your article, Amanda! For the most part, I only had superficial changes to make, mostly to do with spelling and grammar. By the way, I changed the spelling of ‘tanish-red’ to ‘tannish-red’— I think this is right but I’m not entirely sure? I really enjoyed your sections on behavior, especially the ‘tail-wagging’ dominance behavior. Very interesting. A cool section to include would be interactions with other species. What predates upon the wasps, if anything? This is a small portion, however. Your article was extremely complete. Kellykries (talk) 12:22, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Additional Review
editI like your right hand box that include a picture and conservation status graph. The main changes I made to your article were linking the article to more pages in order to increase the amount of traffic on the page. In general I made a few other small grammatical changes to the article in order to improve its flow. I would suggest adding further links to the article in order to further improve its status however was not exactly sure which links to add. Nice job! Amy Krause
Suggestions
editNice job on this article. Your overview flows nicely. Your taxobox on the right-hand side of the page is very thorough and informative. I feel like you could add some more detail about the colony cycle such as which foundress becomes queen when a nest is founded by multiple foundresses. Are multiple foundresses also needed when an old nest is used to establish a new colony? When are colonies/workers most active and what happens to them over the winter? I would rename the nest location and stings subsection under the human importance section since it is a little bit confusing which topic is the main focus of this subsection. Overall you have a lot of good detailed information in this article. I also like the pictures and the distribution map which nicely illustrate your article. Good job! nef614 (talk) 22:46, 20 November 2014 (UTC)