User:NyQuildrops/sandbox

Article evaluation for Dorsal nerve cord

Everything in the article is relevant to the article topic. There is a major problem with this article, which is there’s no references material available. It does have other links to related materials within the article, and those links do work. The article presentation point seems to be neutral however, I believe there are some parts on where the wording of certain process can be improved.

There is a recent edit noted on the talk page to correct one of the information, that was done in January of 2018. There is no rating for this article and seems like this article’s position on Wikipedia is shaky (might get removed) due to lack of references. It is part of WikiProject Biology and WikiProject Animal anatomy.

The way how this article described gave a well-rounded information on the topic. There are parts for other information as a refresher if the reader might need it. For example, our topic is about dorsal hollow nerve cord, and the article includes some information about the anatomical position terms to assist with the understanding of the location of the nerve cord.

Editing the Article for Dorsal nerve cord

In bipedal organisms dorsal is the back and ventral is the front.

Dissection organism assignment Week 4

1. Stingray: After some research I've learned that stingrays are closely related to sharks, that sparks my curiosity for whether their skin will be similar to the sharks. I also want to dissect and see how their tail is made/ see the spine inside the tail. 3 articles to edit: Whitespotted whipray, Stingray injury, Honeycomb whipray
2. Bat: Because Batman! Biological reason would be because their bone structure in bats' wings and human arms have close resemblance and I just want a closer look their wings. Why didn't our ancestors didn't get pressure to select for flying mechanisms! 3 articles to edit: Bat wing development, Kitti's hog-nosed bat, bat flight
3. Turtle: Teenage Ninja Turtles! That use to be my favorite show and was really disappointed as a kid when I found out the real turtles don't look like them. Also, I am just really curious about their shell and how their body fit in it. I want to find out how the dissecting part would turns out for turtles! 3 articles to edit: turtle shell, Cultural depictions of turtles, Red-eared slider

Week 5: Bat's addition of information and team work

I will be adding information about the Fluid Balance (homeostasis) on microbat in the article microbat. Mainly focusing about how deprivation of fluid can lead to urea poisoning. Lyons, R., & Wimberley, T. (2014). Introduction to the Care and Rehabilitation of Microbats. Reterived from www.bats.org.au/uploads/.../Care-and-Rehabiliation-of-Microbats-V3-Mar14.pdf

Week 6: Draft

Fluid intake for bats is an important factor for survival. Due to their body composition of having over 80% of the body surface is naked they are more prone to dehydration rapidly. Water helps maintain their ionic balance, thermoregulation system, and removal of wastes and toxins from the body via urine. They are also susceptible to blood urea poisoning if they do not receive enough fluid. (Will add more once I find more resource and more description on their urea poisoning if/when I find a credible source.)

Week 7: Peer Review

For Gar,

Since swim bladder has been extensively studied how would you add more to contribute it? Also, I am not quite sure on who is doing what part for the team members. For the Gar Roe I think it would be great if you can get some roe! (I hope your Gar will have some!) I think the anatomy portion is set and have a solid plan on what to add.

For Turtle,

Yelena: The content you have so far is good and is neutral. I like how you incorporated the plan to use the what you will/ anticipated to find from your dissection. Jackie: I see a clear direction from your draft. You have valuable information that you can add to the page for neck retraction. I see that both you and Yelena’s direction for improvement is really similar so perhaps woven the information together or collaborate to improve. Heather: Interesting approach to look at the challenges and exploring on how they were able to survive despite those challenge would be a unique addition for the article.  

Week 9: Feedback Responses

General themes for improvement after reading the the responses from my peers

• More sources and add more content
• What kind of picture will I contribute that is related to fluid intake or regulation

I was surprised by some of the responses because I have not thought about it for some of the suggestions. One idea that was new to me was specifying what kind of fluid they intake. I can elaborate more from this idea by including types of fluid, the regulation for the fluid intake and even if I want to focus on one kind of fluid I need to make sure the type is clearly stated.

Another thing was to research more on the topic about the regulation of fluids (in general) and building connection to the organs that associate with the micro bat. Then I can focus on the organs and structures that are related to the fluid regulation during dissection/ time spend with my bat. (The suggestion for what kind of organs I will focus on was also in some of the feedback.)

One picture that I want to discuss with my group and professor is if we could take a picture of our bat on the palm of our hand or with something to show the size comparison, in order to bring out the image of how small these bats are! I was shocked after seeing the specimen in person, from reading the size from various sources about how small this bat is doesn't seem to bring out the idea of their size but seeing them in person is totally different.

The main improvement I plan to make is to gather more sources and materials on fluid intake and the physiology and anatomy of the bat (And linking the sources from Wikipedia if available to my draft) . After gaining knowledge and information on the organs then I can plan to see what organs or structures that might want to pay closer attention to during dissection.

For my group members, I think Frankee's part is really well covered from multiple aspect about flying but I think maybe finding a source or data about lower oxygen consumption rates relative to body mass for both the bat and another flying animal to further strengthen the information about flying information for bats. For Lianne, since I know you will be working on jaw/teeth and the plan to extract or isolate it from the specimen we received sounds exciting! Based on your old draft with what you provided with the eyes, if you follow similar styling and incorporating sources then I think your future draft will be a good one!

New/more sources

Brandon J. Klug, Dayna A. Goldsmith, Robert M.R. Barclay Canadian Journal of Zoology, 2012, 90(3): 329-336, https://doi.org/10.1139/z11-139 (This is another topic I should probably explore on where it talk about the fluid intake and behavior change for pregnant bats.)

So far this is not much sources for the topics I said I wanted to explore more on...

Comments from Dr. Schutz:

• Good job responding to the reviews and finding common patterns. You were supposed to respond in your main sandbox space, but I was able to find you individual responses.
• As you work through your drafts, be sure to use the rubric I provided
• You may want to consider looking specifically at the comparative structure of the bat kidneys as this is the primary organ for water balance.

Week 10! DRAFT #2

I incorporated the kidney function with relation to the fluid balance. I noticed that in the main bat page or any other bat page there wasn't much in depth kidney information, so I plan to add more detailed and informative kidney functions in bats. This includes basic generalization of kidney function in relation to different type of bats. I want to go a little more in dept toward the non carnivorous bat and their system since they don't get much attention as bats.

The kidney has many roles in maintaining homeostasis such as maintaining the fluid levels and electrolytes, removing the excess material, filtration of toxins, etc. The kidney filters a lot of the blood and approximately 25% of the cardiac output goes to the kidney. In mammals, their ecological distribution and their diet have an impact toward urine concentration and in their renal specialization. The kidney composition differs between bats with a different diet. For vampire bats such as Desmodus rotundus and Pizonyx vivesi and in neotropical bats with carnivorous feeding habit, they have a thin cortex and long renal papilla to have more efficient water conservation due to their protein-rich diet. In old world fruit bats pteropodidae they have tick cortex and very short conical papilla. The loop of Henle is a structure in the kidney where it creates a concentration gradient in the medulla of the kidney and reabsorption of water occurs. The longer loop of Henle the more concentrated the concentration of urine, thus in insectivorous bat such as Schneider’s leaf-nosed bat (Hipposideros speoris) they have a longer loop of Henle.

Good fluid balance maintenance is an important category for the well-being of the whole organism. Homeostasis in terms of fluid regulation is the tendency to regulate and maintain the internal levels of fluids along with its components, such as sodium, electrolytes, etc. with responses to environmental change. In bats, they have higher metabolic rate associated with flying, which leads to an increased respiratory water loss. In addition to their metabolic rate contributing to the rate of water loss, their large wings which are composed of the highly vascularized membrane increases surface area leading to cutaneous evaporative water loss. \Water helps maintain their ionic balance, thermoregulation system, and removal of wastes and toxins from the body via urine. They are also susceptible to blood urea poisoning if they do not receive enough fluid.

Week 11!

cross section of a mammals kidney.

Plans for adding a picture

Will adding a picture of the kidney from the specimen.

The addition of this picture will contribute to the main bat page. This picture will allow the readers to see the position of where the kidneys are in the bat, and see the size of it in the micro bat.

First taking the attached kidney with the bat, to show the size comparison.  

Then I will take out one kidney to cut in a cross section under dissecting scope and take pictures under the microscope. For other kidney will carefully take out with the ureter attached to it. This dissection will be a delicate process that I plant to carry out in up coming lab session.

Week 12 Moving contents to the page!

I added a subheading Kidney Function under Internal systems section.

This is the portion I added for this week, I tried to add more context without touching the original content. I will add more anatomy and physiological aspect of the kidney in bats later. Tomorrow 5/1/2018 I will take a picture of the kidney with the camera for specimens in the back lab room.

The kidney structure of the vampire bats such as Desmodus rotundus and Pizonyx vivesi and in neotropical bats with carnivorous feeding habit, they have a thin cortex and long renal papilla to have more efficient water conservation due to their protein-rich diet. In frugivorous bats such as pteropodidae, they have a thick cortex and very short conical papilla.

Week 13

I added this homeostasis part under the kidney section. I will go back to the anatomy and physiology of some of the specific structures of interest when I upload the picture.

Homeostasis in terms of fluid balance is the tendency to regulate and maintain the internal levels of fluids along with its components, such as sodium and electrolytes with responses to the environmental change. Bats have higher metabolic rates associated with flying, which lead to an increased respiratory water loss. Their large wings are composed of the highly vascularized membranes, increasing the surface area to lead to cutaneous evaporative water loss. Water helps maintain their ionic balance, thermoregulation system, and removal of wastes and toxins from the body via urine. They are also susceptible to blood urea poisoning if they do not receive enough fluid.

Week 14 Final week

Ventral view of the right kidney and ureter of the free-tailed microbat (Genus Tadarida). Specimen from the Pacific Lutheran University Natural History collection.

For this final editing, I just did some minor improvement. I linked the renal papilla information to an existing Wikipedia page. The picture attached is from our project specimen, a microbat, from Pacific Lutheran University Natural History collection. I cleaned out the surrounding internal organs, to the best of my abilities to exposed the kidney and relating structures. In the picture, only the kidney and the ureter are clearly visible. I decided not to add this picture to the main bat page, because I don't think it will have a significant impact toward the readers understanding on the urinary structure of the bat or to aid the "internal system" section, due to its structural similarities with many other mammals' kidney. I did add this picture on Wikipedia commons, so it will be there for those who are curious to see what a microbat's kidney look like.

With suggestion form Lianne to improve the structure of the sentence for their "large wings increasing SA leading to evaporative water loss", I will make an update/edit on the main bat page.

I thanked a few people that helped with my contribution on the actual Wikipedia page to make the content better.

Big shout-out to my Professor and my team for all the feedback and assistance!

Comment from Lianne:

Hey Jimmy! I think the info you include is great. You also linked various other wiki pages for some of the terms you mention. The only things I suggest you can make changes to are:

• Reword the first sentence to say "In terms of fluid balance, homeostasis is the tendency to regulate and maintain the internal levels of fluids in response to environmental change." (Maybe you don't need to include "sodium and electrolytes" so the sentence flows better?)
• Reword the third sentence to say "Their large wings are composed of highly vascularized membranes, increasing the surface area to lead to cutaneous evaporative water loss."
• Reword your image caption to include the genus of the microbat and the anatomical view/position. You can say something like "Ventral view of a free-tailed microbat (Genus Tadarida) showing the right kidney and ureter."