Talk:Army ant

Peer review
-I thought the title of Army Ant syndrome was a little confusing and not specific. It does not really tell me exactly what you are talking about. Is this an actual syndrome or is this just giving some general information on the ant? -This section also has information on nomadic phase and statuary phase, but this might be better to be removed because this is already specified in the next two sections. -I thought the first two sections of Colony Behavior were short and could use more information. This is “Queen conduct” and “Pheromone recognition.” “Loss of queen” could also use more information. Additions here would really help the article. Hansika.n (talk) 01:24, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * The term "army ant syndrome" is a common phrase used by myrmecologists to describe convergence of a rather wide set of behaviors. As 'syndrome' is a term used to describe a condition defined by a collection of symptoms rather than an underlying cause, the term is etymologically sound as well. I motion that this title remain in usage. Yarnbell333 (talk) 21:30, 6 May 2014 (EST)

Translation
Several sections of this article (the "Nomadic and stationary phase" part) were a poor translation of the German page. I am re-translating them to improve the English. Please correct them or this talk section as appropriate - I am pretty new to Wikipedia editing. --Pixiroll (talk) 03:18, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Copyright violation
The entire text of the sections "Introduction", "Life cycle" and "Raiding" are lifted verbatim from http://www.infiniteworld.org/research/lifecycle.htm (listed in External links). Since that site contains a copyright notice and there is no indication that permission was given to the contributor, I'm removing those sections.

I am not using as I see no reason to have this page deleted entirely. --Bk0 16:04, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


 * This was listed as a copyviol a long time ago and was deleted once, then recreated in a non-copyviol form. The anon ip, however, keeps putting back the copyrighted information. --khaosworks (talk • contribs) 16:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


 * [um]
 * it does say that is article was used with permission. also there needs to be more here on army ants than this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.245.5.186 (talk • contribs) 2006-01-08t20:19:51z


 * Used by permission, unless that permission is very broad, is not compatible with the GFDL. Therefore, unless the permission can be clarified to be compatible, this will have to be trimmed/deleted again. - Taxman Talk 19:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * [I put the text up (and gave permission)]
 * I copied the info from my website to here because the army ant link was a stub and needed better info. I don't mind it being up here despite the copywrite notice on my website since I provide that info and associated photos free of charge for educational uses anyway. I realize that is not clarified on the infiniteworld website. -Tim Brown —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mobius27 (talk • contribs) 2006-09-27t07:10:11z


 * See WP:IOWN. -- Jeandré, 2009-01-14t10:12z

Addition to the Army Ant
Hi, I'm a student at Washington University in St.Louis taking a class on behavioral ecology. I have added sections and subsections on Morphology, and Behavior. I have altered the title 'usage' to 'taxonomy' and added more information to the 'foraging' section. I also included citations to the areas I have changed. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a message. Pocketkings (talk) 00:33, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Peer Review
Section titles have their first world capitalized, but that's it, unless it's a proper noun.

Army ant syndrome: you have a lot of sources in a small area, making the section difficult to read.

Nomadic and stationary phase: eliminate this, since you only have one sentence.

Nomadic phase: There are no in-text citations for this section. Include links to Eciton burchelli and Eciton hamatum.

Stationary phase: No in-text citations, please add.

Colony behavior: Once again, eliminate this, since you only have two sentences. The alternative is to expand on the general points of colony behavior before delving into specifics. Italicize Formicidae if it needs it (I'm not sure).

Queen conduct: too short. Please expand.

Pheromone recognition: too short.

Colony fission: you have citation errors (Franks in parenthesis). Otherwise, this is one of the better subsections.

Sexual selection by workers: link to bivouac.

Loss of queen: you have inconsistent citation formats. Get rid of the comma between sources after the first sentence. Try to expand upon this section.

How they locomote and navigate their surroundings: change this heading to sound more formal. "Army ant" should not be capitalized ("army ant", not "Army ant"). Include in-text citations.

Foraging: link to difficult to understand concepts, like "concentration gradient." This may be simple to you, but not necessarily to the average reader. Citations are needed in the second paragraph.

Nesting: In-text citations needed. Some of the language is informal, please fix ("and so build a sort of ball, which may look unstructured to a layman's eyes, but is actually a well-organized structure").

Raids: Expand upon this section, since it's one of the more interesting things about army ants. Link to any species listed. In-text citations are necessary.

Rest of article: ok, but limited. Look up the article for Ant, and use it to build other sections when you can.

Overall: Good, but you need to work on the small stuff. The "macro" stuff is fine. Get your in-text citations in there.

Talk to me on my talk page if you have any questions. As you may have gathered, I'm a harsh critic, so don't take anything too personally. Good luck!

Gharris7 (talk) 03:50, 5 October 2013 (UTC)Gharris7

Peer Review: Overall really well written article; I’m impressed with how thorough and comprehensive it is. At the end of it I can only say I wish there was a section on their interactions with humans. There are a few minor reference things I’d recommend looking at too. “new queens will head the two new colonies.[33] Franks)” --> Typo here? (Franks) When new bivouacs are formed, communication between the original colony and the new bivouacs will cease to exist. (Franks)  -->Use Ref tags! The two pheromones Methyl anthranilate and Methyl nicotinate (Nicotine) are the pheromones that assist in travel. These pheromones are secreted by the ants' postpygidial glands.	 -->Cite this!

Keep up the good work!Jabes808 (talk) 05:46, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Peer Review: I appreciate how detailed the sections that you edited are, and how often you cite your sources, since this seems to be a problem with the overall article. My biggest comment would be to clarify/clean up the section on the nomadic and stationary phases - there are a lot of redundant and conflicting facts between you and what looks like a previous (uncited) editor's work. I would suggest not writing about the phases under the heading "Army ant syndrome" and instead write about them in their own sections. And please clarify whether the stationary phase ends when the eggs hatch or when the pupae emerge from their cocoons, because these are two separate life stages. If you're looking for more to write about, perhaps you could discuss eusocial behavior and the development of distinctive castes. I know Eciton burchellii is well known for its large soldier caste. Good job! Blubird25 (talk) 07:27, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Peer Review Second Round
Peer Review: I think that the page is much improved. I changed a few sentences just to vary sentence structure. There was a reference line in the line text which I removed because I thought it was an error. I changed the title "How the move and navigate in their environment" to Locomotion and Navigation. The latter is more concise. I would also suggest combining the smaller sections into one section unless you can find more sources.

Overall, the article probably needs expansion in the other sections to meet Good Article. I think it has a good chance of getting good article if you can find some other sources. Good job!!!! Kaijones5245 (talk) 21:41, 29 October 2013 (UTC) kaijones5245

Further comments toward GA
I'm not qualified to comment on scientific aspects here, but a few general suggestions:
 * The numerous very short sections are a problem per WP:LAYOUT, which discourages very brief sections. Ideally these should be combined into larger sections.
 * Some statements in the lead aren't supported in the body of the article, and that the lead doesn't provide a thorough summary of the article's body. You can see more details about how this works at WP:LEAD.
 * The "in popular culture" appears to be original research, and also seems irrelevant/trivial; I'd suggest deleting it. Actually, I take that back; I'm just going to delete it myself, but feel free to restore if you strongly disagree.
 * Obviously, almost everything should be sourced.

Good luck with revisions! Cheers, Khazar2 (talk) 03:32, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Hey, Thanks for the suggestions for revision. I conducted a number of changes. Would you happen to know what more should be done to push it to good article? Pocketkings (talk) 02:16, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Interactions with others
I removed the sections for interactions for now due to not having enough sources. If I find enough research to support the information, I'll put it back up. For now I have pasted the section below this comment. If anyone has sources, feel free to cite and move the section pack to the article page!

--Interactions--

---Army ants from other colonies--- ---Other animals--- ---Human beings---
 * Army ants that have lost their queen try to join another colony, but in other cases, when two army-ant trails of the same species meet, they usually change their direction to avoid conflicts.
 * Over an army-ant trail, there often fly other insects or birds, trying to catch animals fleeing from the ants.
 * There are some beetle species that look similar to army ants and live in their colonies as parasites. Other parasites of army ants are mites.
 * Some animals eat army ants.
 * The Maasai use army ants to stitch wounds. They put them on the border of the wound, and the ants will sink their mandibles into the skin. Then, the bodies of the ants are separated from the heads.
 * There are (unproven) stories that in former times African kings used army ants to execute criminals sentenced to death.
 * The siafu ants on Mount Meru in Tanzania were implicated in the death of a missing tourist to the Congo.
 * Army ants are not always hated and feared; they are also appreciated, because they eat pests living in houses and on the agricultural fields.
 * Experts widely agree that because of the continuous growth of the colony, the immense need of food (many species are also selective when it comes to food), and the nomadic behavior, it is not possible to keep real army ants in terraria for a longer time. In trials performed by zoos and museums, the colonies died within days or weeks. Among ant friends, the marauder ants of the genus Pheidologeton are very popular, because they behave similarly to army ants, but they are said to be difficult to keep.

Pocketkings (talk) 02:19, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

References Notes
I split the long quotes out into a notes section from the references section. I also added links to two of the references where the full text is available and changed the access template to open. What is the guideline for the access template? Should the BBC news article that is available online be marked open access? What about the Dawkins ref, a book for which the page cited is available (and linked to the page number) should that be marked open access? The entire book is not available. I think this is an excellent article and should be renominated for Good Article status once a little more work is done. - - MrBill3 (talk) 07:56, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

"Reproduction responsibilities" section needs editing
Though the rest of this article seems quite good, the section "Reproduction responsibilities" contains numerous internal contradictions, spelling inaccuracies, and confusing sentences. For example, the first two sentences state that 1) only the queen reproduces and 2) workers have offspring: "In the colony, instead of having both queen and workers producing off spring, the queen is the sole reproductive in the colony. With queens mating with multiple males, workers are on average more closely related to the offspring of the queen that to the offspring of other workers."

Other sentences simply need editing, like this one: "First, if the worker reproduces, it lowers the general performance of the colony because it is not working." Here I would suggest editing to "First, if the worker reproduces, the general performance of the colony suffers because the worker is not working." There are several other sentences that need editing. I would edit them myself, but I think it would be better if someone who knows this content would undertake to correct the content and the prose at the same time. Twdevine (talk) 18:45, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

It's been a year and a half, so I have edited the section for clarity and to correct the grammar and spelling errors. I have removed sentences that are confusing and removed the jarring use of "sons", although I am unable to resolve the fact that the third reason has little to do with general reproduction, as some ants can reproduce assexually. There needs to be additional information on how the workers would get fertilized to produce males in the first place, and the mechanism by which workers suppress reproductions (is his biological or behavioral?). neonKow 15:16, 17 November 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Neonkow (talk • contribs)

Update needed
Apologies for the ugly Update template, but this article needs to be updated per Brady et al. (2014) who synonymized the previous dorylomorph subfamilies (Aenictinae, Aenictogitoninae, Cerapachyinae, Ecitoninae and Leptanilloidinae) under Dorylinae. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Article + link:. jonkerz ♠talk 15:19, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Hello, I uploaded a scheme showing the lyfe cycle and bivouac structure of eciton burchelli army ants. I found the data on various different sources on the web, if someone has more detailed information, please share it with me so that I can update and improve the picture.--Enricaloc (talk) 22:15, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Edits by IP users
As the history shows, there have been some recent edits by IP users trying to change the references to timeline and evolution. I first noticed this when I saw the article saying the breakup of Gondwana, and endpoint for the development of army ant behavior occurred 10 thousand years ago as opposed to ~100 million years ago (the latter being what the sources say). I'm reverting the last edit but wikipedians should probably keep an eye out for repeats. Rifter0x0000 (talk) 16:03, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

World map indicating habitation?
What the article needs is a world map showing what nations army ants inhabit. Phantom in ca (talk) 19:57, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Questions
The introduction seems to endorse the notion that army ant behavior reflects multiple distinct lineages which may have gotten it concurrently, then several paragraphs down it claims the opposite. This should be fixed, to either state both positions and the state of the controversy if there is one, or state as fact the scientific consensus if there is one.

It's also stated that army ants don't build nests, but also that the soldier caste brings prey to the nest, which is confusing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teucer (talk • contribs) 14:01, 31 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Done. Dyanega (talk) 17:09, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Unclear Usage
The section on soldiers states "The soldiers of army ants are larger than the workers, and they have much larger mandibles than the worker class of ants, with older workers possessing larger heads and stronger mandibles than the younger ones." Given the context I suspect this was intended to be "with older soldiers possessing larger heads", but it's possible this is intended as written, that older workers have larger heads. In that case it reasonably should be be moved to the section on workers. Does anybody know the intended meaning? TuxedoMonkey (talk) 20:35, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

contradictions in "foraging" section
The math does not work here. Two numbers are given, one must be wrong. 500,000 per day, or 3000 per hour (3000 x 24h = 72000 per day) Please some biologist/entomologist fix this. Tiptopper (talk)

POOR morphology section
For example, it does not describe the ant's vision capabilities. Some types are thought to be blind and others do still have tiny eyes. The article should discuss that and provide angular/spatial resolution of most popular types of this ant. 93.185.19.193 (talk) 16:15, 27 November 2019 (UTC)