Talk:Xylocopa nasalis

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): AddyShak. Peer reviewers: HBrodke, Kew8888, VAD2015.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:13, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Peer Review

Great work on this article! I made a few changes but generally it looked pretty good. I moved the picture into the right hand box at the top of the page, as well as italicized the name of the article since it is the species name. I rephrased a few sentences in the taxonomy and phylogeny section to make the information clearer, and I made morphology into a subsection under description- changed the name to ‘male female dimorphism’ since all of the information you had is about physiological differences between sexes. I also rearranged the behavior section by moving nest creation and nest competition to subheadings under nesting.

For future edits, the overview section needs some more information to really summarize the article and draw in readers. I also think you should explain what polylecty means (in the foraging section). I especially liked the detail you used in the description and identification section, compound eyes are pretty cool. Nice job! HBrodke (talk) 16:48, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestions and corrections! I will be working on editing this page based on your suggestions. AddyShak (talk) 20:47, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Comments and Changes Made 10/21/2015

The Xylocopa nasalis entry provided some interesting facts and was a good start for a more detailed entry in the future. Although there was some grammatical issues, the writing was condense and very accessible for a wider audience. I was very interested in the nest competition found within these bees because it is a behavior that I did not know about before. I first edited the descriptive overview to include more exciting information about how important they are to their ecosystems and their conservation status. Lastly, throughout the whole paper I rewrote the species name as “X. nasalis” in place of “oriental carpenter bee” which was a stylistic change that helped the entry look more professional. Within the “Taxonomy” section, I linked the family name so the readers could use these other entries as references. While I also linked the man who discovered the bee because I thought that would be some cool extra resources the readers could use if they were interested. Within the “Description and Identification” section, I linked photoreceptors. I linked this word because there were many difficult concepts without this section and having some extra resources on one concept could help the readers gain a better understanding of the whole. Within the “Description/Identification” section, I linked the regions included. I linked these words because it could be a good reference for readers trying to get a better understanding of the ecological conditions within their ecosystem. I also linked the plant species (Lithocarpus, Castanopsis) within the "Foraging" section so the readers could get a clearer understanding of their food sources. Within the “Mating” section I linked pheromones and mesosoma because both these words were essential to having a clear picture of their mating habits. Within, the “Colony” section I also linked hibernation just in case some readers were not familiar with this behavior. Lastly within the “Predators” section, I linked woodpecker, diptera and bombyliidae because they were essential organism within this section. I believe that the “Colony Cycle” section can be expanded upon to include colony decline. Helenaxeros (talk) 20:06, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you so much for making these corrections! I understand it can be tedious, so I´m very appreciative!AddyShak (talk) 20:46, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Peer Review 3

Great work on the article. I added a hyper link to West Malaysia and changed nest to nest's in Colony cycle. I would expand the overview some more. Other than that, I would take Helenaxeros advice.VAD2015 (talk) 06:25, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Edits for Behavioral Ecology Wiki Project

1) For the Taxonomy and Phylogeny section, I recommend including the family in the description as well as discussing what species are most related to the bees. This would allow for a greater understanding of the bee’s origin. I appreciate the fact of the individual who derived the name a lot. 2) The Description and identification section states that “females do not have these characteristics” but it should be clarified exactly what characteristics the females do have. Be careful using a negative without clarifying what the positive is. To emphasize the male female dimorphism a picture would be useful as a visual next to the description. 3) For the Distribution and habitat section, it would be useful to include a map as a visual for where the species is located. It would also be beneficial to state how dense the population of bee is (whether it is rare or common in the area). 4) For the Nesting section, it may be good to clarify which nesting assignment the mothers and daughters take over. If it is indistinguishable which individual does what role, then that should be stated. For the Nest competition section, it should be included which species frequently compete with the bee for the nest. That would allow for hyperlinking to other pages as well as a greater understanding of what interactions the bee has. 5) Under the foraging section, in order to expand on it, it would be good to include how X. nasalis forages for food. Whether it be the worker bees who fly out to collect pollen or specifically male bees, more detail would benefit this section. 6) Under the mating section, the first sentence is a little long and confusing. Just rewording or adding commas would make it easier to understand. 7) The colony cycle can be expanded a bit by including exactly what months in the spring the bees usually mate in. Perhaps, inclusion of how the new nest is fond, perhaps by the queen bee, would be helpful in understanding how the nest cycles each year. The article was well written and an interesting read! Good job.

Kew8888 (talk) 15:31, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Edits and comments

In order to improve this article to become a good article, it needs to contain more detailed information on the bee species. I think the general overview should be longer. Including information about the species’ role in ecosystem would be a great hook for the readers. In the “Description” section, the article says that the species is relatively large but doesn’t provide other example species to compare its size to. I think it would be helpful if such information was provided. Under the “Foraging” section, I was confused about the word “polylecty.” I’m not sure what the writer meant by this so an explanation or a correction would be helpful. Also, the subsections under the “Behavior” section could use some more information. Especially, the “Communication” subsection feels a little short so expanding it would be beneficial to improving the article. I added some links including Xylocopa, metasoma, and pupate to help the readers understand the article better. Also, I moved up the “Colony cycle” section because I think it is pretty basic information and would make more sense to be introduced earlier in the article. KimCourtney (talk) 21:12, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Peer review

First off, you need to cite the Westwood, 1838 in the taxonomic box. Also, headings should only have the first word capitalized (i.e. Taxonomy and phylogeny not Taxonomy and Phylogney). You might want to describe what "stigma cells" are in the Description section. What color are the females' faces? You say that they aren't yellow or white. Does this mean the faces are black? For the high female based sex ratio (in Nest population), I assume that kin selection is a contributing factor since they are solitary bees. You may want to mention something about why sisters tolerate one another. The nesting section doesn't make sense. You say that X. nasalis ia a solitary bee, but then you say that it has a simple social nest. This needs to be clarified, and/or more information needs to be added. Also, you may want to descirbe what polylecty is in the Foraging section. On a few minor notes, it is not necessary to say "The X. nasalis, and saying "X. nasalis carpenter bees" is repetative since all X. nasalis bees are carpenter bees. I fixed all of the examples of this that I could find. It would be nice to have a conservation graph/chart in the taxonomy box if you know the status of the bee. Finally, the Communication section needs to be expanded. What do the dances look like, and are the dances specific to this species? Overall, I think that the page contains good information, but it just needs a little more to be well rounded. Floyd Burney (talk) 05:27, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Suggestions

Overall, your article is an interesting read. I do, however, feel that it needs more sources to improve its validity/credibility. I also think that some sections can be merged, such as the “Nest” and “Nest Population” sections as they are very similar and the “Nest Population” has too little information to stand alone. It might work to improve the flow of the article if all of the relevant information on nesting is clumped together. I understand that some of the information regarding nesting is connected to behavior but it would seem more cohesive if you grouped all this information together and then included some subheadings that specifically tied to behavior.Megxb (talk) 05:16, 5 December 2015 (UTC)