Talk:Strepsiptera

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Chonaron.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:18, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Parasite vs Parasitoid

Aren't they parasites rather than parasitoids? I'm pretty sure they don't typically kill their host. --152.1.172.167 17:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out. Resh, V. H. & R. T. Cardé (Editors) 2003. Encyclopedia of Insects. Academic Press. notes that

Strepsiptera. Strepsiptera form an enigmatic order of nearly 400 species of highly modified endoparasites,

— page 893

and

Strepsiptera (twisted-winged parasites) is a cosmopolitan order of small insects (males, 1–7 mm; females, 2–30 mm) that are obligate insect endoparasites.

— p. 1094

So the correction is made. Shyamal 13:29, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Contradiction

The article states strepsiptera are "obligate" and "endoparasitic". I'm under the impression obligate parasites cannot live outside their host' body, yet strepsiptera routinely live outside the host as both larvae and adults. Ditto "endoparasites." (In any case, is not "obligate endoparasite" redundant?

Compounding the errors is the (hyperlinked) phrase "on other insects" which link leads to "Entomophagous parasite", yet another type of parasite. That article is riddled with errors and contradictions as well. I'm not an expert, and I guess we need one.Nickrz (talk) 00:10, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

"Obligate" is usually used in the sense of being the opposite of "opportunistic" (or facultative). Endoparasites, including those of humans routinely spend a part of their life cycle outside their hosts - eggs and larvae of tapeworms for instance. Shyamal (talk) 02:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Have read some of the sources and rewritten some parts. Shyamal (talk) 07:37, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Common name

Mention if they have a common name, or mention the lack thereof. Jidanni (talk) 03:10, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Notice of requested move

• Xenos → Xenos (graphics chip)
• Xenos (Greek) → Xenos

See Talk:Xenos#Requested move. --Una Smith (talk) 19:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Trochanter

I removed this phrase "(which lack trochanters)" from the article. The wikilink takes me to an article on vertebrate (human) thigh bones. Obviously this in not the meaning wanted here. Could someone who knows what the insect "trochanter" is fix this with the correct link?

Nick Beeson (talk) 22:12, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

There is some information at arthropod leg. Shyamal (talk) 02:02, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

New molecular evidence places Strepsiptera sister, within, or at least closely related to beetles

A paper in 2009 studied 6 genes and found (according to them) strong evidence that the Strepsiptera are in fact sister to Coleoptera. The paper is:

Wiegmann, B. M., Trautwein, M. D., Kim, J.-W., Cassel, B. K., Bertone, M. a, Winterton, S. L., & Yeates, D. K. (2009). Single-copy nuclear genes resolve the phylogeny of the holometabolous insects. BMC biology, 7, 34. doi:10.1186/1741-7007-7-34

Another paper in 2009 looking at this problem found that either the Strepsiptera are derived within beetles, or that the Strepsiptera are sister to Coleoptera + Neuroptera (this paper is open access):

McKenna, D. D., & Farrell, B. D. (2010). 9-genes reinforce the phylogeny of holometabola and yield alternate views on the phylogenetic placement of Strepsiptera. PloS one, 5(7), e11887. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011887

Any comment on this? I'm thinking a small rewrite of the classification section is in order to reflect this. Quinzer (talk) 18:09, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Go for it! Shyamal (talk) 08:36, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Strepsiptera male picture

I've added an image of a male Strepsiptera with a close up of the eyes. I'm going to get the permission of the grad student who took the picture. Chonaron (talk) 18:17, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Got the permission.Chonaron (talk) 13:13, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Strepsiptera/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Is it really correct to call the Stepsiptera "parasitoids"? Parasitoids (almost) invariably kill their host. I don't believe this to be the case with strepsipterans, except for a few of the most primitive sorts. It might be more accurate to refer to them simply as parasites (and as true parasites of other insects, rather a rarity). But I defer to any professional entomologists who might think otherwise.

Last edited at 12:24, 10 September 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 20:15, 1 May 2016 (UTC)