Talk:Ropalidia romandi

A fact from Ropalidia romandi appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 26 November 2014 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that endoparasites occupying up to 80% of the abdomen of the social wasp Ropalidia romandi may actually increase their host's life span?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2014/November. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Ropalidia romandi.

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Insects: Hymenoptera Low‑importance

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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.

Comments[edit]

Your article is really well-written! I really enjoyed the information, especially the part about the sting of the species. I found a few places where words were repeated and a few sentences that contained grammar mistakes, so I fixed those. Also, I believe you can find a picture of your wasp on Flickr Open Source Photography. There are a few pictures there with some rights reserved but they are licensed and appear to be able to be shared. Lastly, I added the Vespidae project banner to your talk page. Overall, great job! Three is me (talk) 05:02, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Peer Review[edit]

This article included an abundance of facts and presented them with apt academic references. The research seems to be thorough and relevant, providing the article with much information and content to be written about. In terms of formatting, the article had italicized genera and species mentioned quite well. Writing-wise, I felt like there was room for improvement. I felt like the article could do a better job of maintaining a neutral tone and could have more formal writing. I went through the article and have made revisions to all nearly all of the sections. Many sentences had awkward wording, in my opinion. There was some repetition in the article, specifically regarding the absconding process. But overall, a job well done. A list of the sentences revised can be sent upon request. Sandyamuchimilli (talk) 21:59, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Peer Review[edit]

Great job on this article! Overall, it is very well-written and contains an impressive amount of information about R. romandi. I made a several minor edits for clarification, which included fixing a few cases of pronoun-noun disagreement. I also noticed several cases where the species name was treated as a plural - the convention is to treat the species name as a singular. I also added several hyperlinks for easy access to additional information, as well as to define some biological terms for non-scientific readers. You talk about the "metasome" of this wasp, but there is no explanation of what a metasome is or why it is important. Furthermore, I was not able to find any relevant information on Wikipedia about metasomes. Could you explain what a metasome is? I really enjoyed reading about the architecture of R. romandi nests - it would be really cool if you could include a picture! Ruaha (talk) 05:28, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comments[edit]

I have a few suggestions on how to make this a Good Article. This article has a lot of interesting information in it. In the human importance section, there is a lot of information under only one heading. The information about the string could be under a subheading titled “Sting” and the information about elimination of pests could be under the subheading titled “Elimination of Agricultural Pests”. Also, I think diet should come before the human importance section. The picture is good but this article could benefit from more pictures, specifically one in the right hand box at the beginning of the article. Overall, this is a good article. Amgoldberg15 (talk) 23:18, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oligogyny[edit]

Oligogyny was " hypothesized because a difference was found between the number of effective queens in a colony, and the mean number of queens." Can an entomologically more competent editor than I restate this?This is too opaque for me to fix.--Wetman (talk) 19:37, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Peer Review[edit]

This is a very well written article, with a strong introduction and well-organized information. I particularly liked the discussion about the deviation from the haplodiploid hymenoptera theory and why this is so important amongst wasps. I do think the article could use pictures to both help identify the wasp as well as visually break up the writing. The ‘paper bag nests’ seem cool and unique and I’d love to have help visualizing them. HBrodke (talk) 00:22, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Peer Review[edit]

Fantastic Article! The article does a particular good job of describing the two different swarm founding processes that R. romandi engages in (reproductive and abscoding). I found the description of the wasps’ human implication the most interesting part of the article (apparently R. romandi is known to deliver very painful stings and swarm after humans/aggressors if their nests are disturbed). The article can improve by including some discussion about dominance hierarchy, communication, and altruism. The article never mentions anything about a dominance hierarchy, which seems to be a central topic in an overwhelming majority of the other paper wasp species (without dominance the article feels incomplete when compared to other articles). The article also never mentions how communication occurs within R. romandi populations, which would be extremely interesting considering the central importance group activity (swarming) has in the species’ behavior. Lastly, the article does talk about kin relatedness but never mentions altruism, which makes the relatedness section feel incomplete. Jkottapalli (talk) 11:20, 10 September 2015 (Behavioral Ecology)