Talk:Euglossa imperialis

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): Marcus.kwon. Peer reviewers: Eliseoh, Kew8888, KimCourtney, Xerylium, Raymundo.marcelo.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Edits for class
I am a student at Washington University in St. Louis and will be editing and commenting on this article for a class. General changes include abbreviating Euglossa imperialis to Eg. imperialis throughout the article. Also changed references to include links to articles.

I would recommend that you clarify what you mean by "selfish" behavior as the average reader will not be familiar with Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene".

In the Territorial Display section you need to add a citation for (9).

For Inter/Intra-Species Conflict Behavior, the ant is not a parasite of Eg. imperialis. You also don't mention the phoretic mites found on Eg. imperialis at all stages of life. Xerylium (talk) 21:44, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

NOTE on correct abbreviations
I recently was told by Dr. Strassmann and TA's that the correct abbreviation for Euglossa imperialis is actually E. imperialis and not Eg. imperialis. For the next person editing my article, it'd be a great help if someone could fix this. Thanks! Marcus.kwon (talk) 19:06, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks
Thank you for your comments! One thing I wanted to clarify, is that ants of genus Solenopsis are in fact, parasites of Eg. imperialis. This information can be found on page 1011 of the "Nesting Biology of Communal Bees" article by Roberts and Dodson under the section on "Associated Organisms". Below is the excerpt: "Small hypogaeic ants of the genus Solenopsis were found dead in the fumigated [Eg. imperialis] nest, and it was apparent that they had been entering some of the cells from below and robbing them of their contents (Fig. 6). Their galleries were in the soil to 1 side of the nest chamber, which they had penetrated at several points. These ants had entered nearly 10% of the old cells and seemed to pose a considerable threat to the nest." (Roberts and Dodson, "Nesting Biology of Communal Bees") Thank you for everything else! Marcus.kwon (talk) 03:43, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Further edits
You'd already responded before I could go back and finish my comments. I'm glad you found them helpful so far. As for the ants, it is difficult to be entirely certain if they are a parasite as their behavior was not observed, and the evidence thus far only shows an antagonistic relationship, not necessarily a parasitic one.

I'd suggest adding a map of the geographic distribution, as well as expanding the Taxonomy section. Xerylium (talk) 01:51, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Edit
Hey, I'm a student from Washington University of St. Louis and I just wanted to contribute to your article! I think one of the sections you could have elaborated on is the "nest" section. I think you could have talked more about how the nests are built, and how the bees use it for their own benefit. This would be able to support your claim that these nests are communally built but are built with "selfish" reasons. I also thought more detail could have been given for the "life cycle". Currently, each section describes not much more than the length of each stage. However, describing what they do at each stage could have been very interesting. I also did some minor changes such as adding a hyperlink to "apidae" and clarifying that Bombus are more commonly known as bumble bees. I think these changes would help the readers as they read your article. There is also a lack of description on the colony cycle, which is important information for any bee. Although this bee is not social, it still lives communally. So a description of how the cycle of their life works could have been a meaningful addition to the article.'

Otherwise, I found your article to be a delightful read! Matthewkim93 (talk) 03:23, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Edits for Class
Hi! This page organized well with a lot of information about different aspects of the species. I saw the talk page was missing the course banner so I added it. Also, I made some minor edits to improve the organization of the page. I combined the distribution and the habitat sections together since there was not much information in the distribution section by itself and the two sections are closely related. Also, I changed the order of the sections to introduce broader and more basic information about the species in the beginning and then later introduce topics that are more specific and detiled. Other than these changes, I fixed some grammar and typo errors here and there. To further improve this page, I suggest that you expand the taxonomy section a bit more. Right now, it has only one sentence about very basic information. I think fleshing out the section would help engage the readers more in the beginning of the page. Also, I thought the inter/intra-species conflict behavior section could be divided and put the information about the interaction with other species in a separate section. You could put it under a section for parasites under the big heading of intersection with other species, and you could also put the diet section under this heading as well. Overall, this was a great page to read! KimCourtney (talk) 11:03, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Peer Review
Wow do you have lots of information!

I only made a few changes:

In the intro paragraph I fixed a “be” to “bees”.

In the Taxonomy section, I added links to the genera and to the different advanced social bees.

I fixed the English in Description section so that there were complete sentences and I linked metasomal.

In the Colony Cycle section, I fixed some English and linked diploid and polymorphism.

In the Diet section, I linked all the families.

In the Behavior section, I linked proboscis, cineole, and Solenopsis. Additionally I changed the sentence “this could result in a low percentage of pollen-laden bees” to “a low percentage of pollen-laden bees could result”. I was also confused about this phrase, “they experience excessive loads to carry in their hind tibiae for maneuvers, nectar loading, and mate or prey transport”.

Lastly, I changed extra Euglossa imperialis to Eg. Imperialis.

But overall, you had a lot of good information for this bee. Raymundo.marcelo (talk) 04:07, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks!
I appreciate all the additional hyperlinks, I realized I had largely forgotten to do this. Thanks again! Marcus.kwon (talk) 22:15, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

General Comments Behavioral Ecology Wikipedia Project
This article is beautifully written and extremely informative. I have listed below some changes that may assist in the flow of information as well as details that may be included in order to improve the article. There does not seem to be much to edit!

In the overview/introduction section, the last sentence contains the phrase “in the sense that” which can be a little confusing. I suggest switching this phrase to “because” or another term. Further, the last sentence is a bit of a run on.

For the Description and Identification section, it may prove beneficial to include a picture of a male and female bee of this species in order to provide a visual for the description.

In the Distribution and Habitat section, it is a bit unclear why the males were mentioned in terms of territories. It should be clarified by stating why only males are referred to, such as if the males are in charge of the habitat for females to occupy, that should be stated in the beginning for clarification.

The Nest section last sentence that refers to “selfish” individual behavior should be expanded upon to understand why selfish was placed in quotations.

For the colony cycle, it would be helpful to also include the timeline of the species throughout the year, such as specifying when the bee mates as well as what general time does the colony form/disband.

I believe that the Nesting behavior section should be placed under the nesting section of Distribution and Habitat because they both refer to the same topic. This would assist in the organization of information for this article. Kew8888 (talk) 22:46, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks!
Thank you for your comments, I also wish I had access to more pictures I could use on this page, but the one in the taxo box is literally the only one available, both from wikimedia commons and advanced search google images. :( Thanks for your other insights, I will review and take a look into them as well! Marcus.kwon (talk) 22:15, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Peer Review
Hi! This is a beautifully written article, and I enjoyed reading it very much. There was very little that caught my attention in terms of what needed to be edited or added, but I have a couple of comments that I believe would lead to a more fluid and informative article.

In “Taxonomy and Phylogenetics,” I reworded a couple of sentences to fix for grammatical errors, as the sentence structure was a bit awkward. In addition, I would suggest going further into detail about the eusociality of the euglossine bees, as it seems like the reader is assumed to have knowledge of what a “social” bee is defined as. In “Phylogenetic Community Assembly,” I would specify the various ecological conditions you mention that shape the communities of these bees.

“Description and Identification,” as well as “Distribution and Habitat” were well written. I also felt that the insertion of organic compounds under “Fragrance Collection” added to the quality of the article quite a bit. In “Territorial Display,” your first sentence can be interpreted as your own assumption of the aggregations of territories. I would suggest specifying that this assumption is from your source.

All in all, great job! Eliseoh (talk) 02:51, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Peer Review
Hi, my name is Chris and I am an undergraduate student at Washington University in St. Louis.

This article was probably one of the best articles I have read during the course of this semester and I really wanted to try to make this into “good article” status. I added a few more hyperlinks including the following: trapline, country names, name of chemicals (methyl salicate), and lekking. I also combined the colony cycle and life cycle section sections because they are both very related. Besides these changes, this article was very well-written and I hope this article can reach “good article” status. Junsang.cho (talk) 00:06, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I am an undergraduate student at Washington University in St. Louis. This article was really interesting and included an impressive collection of information about this unique species. In the Nest section, the author mentions selfish behavior without a supporting definition. I suggest adding one in order to strengthen this point. I enjoyed the discussion of why E. imperialis is a non-social bee, which included theories we learned in class to support it. It would be interesting to expand on the evolutionary behavior of pollinating primarily orchid flowers. How is a long tongue an evolutionarily adaptive advantage to E. imperialis? I really enjoyed reading this article! Orchidabar (talk) 03:16, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Print.
This should not be considered for reference as it has been proven to be nonsensicla as there is no selfish gene and genes do not exert an infulence over behaiour. They are merely for the production and configuartions of proteins and the processes of cell division. Not behaviour. 174.95.33.10 (talk) 00:17, 26 November 2022 (UTC)