Talk:Predation/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: RockMagnetist (talk · contribs) 18:37, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

I am sorry to say that, although much of this article is well-written and well-sourced, it badly fails criterion 3 (broadness of coverage) on both counts: It doesn't address the main aspects of the topic, and it doesn't stay focused on the topic.

The question of focus is particularly relevant to the first section (Strategies). This leads off the article with a particular classification scheme for heterotrophs in general and a table in which the two kinds of predation (social and solitary) occupy one box out of six. Most of the section discusses parasites. Normally, micropredators are classified with parasites and in this article predation is defined as the killing and eating of prey. That leaves a subsection on "conventional predation", which appears to be indistinguishable from predation, and "social predation", which is a subset of "conventional predation".

As for addressing the main aspects of the topic: social predation gets three sentences while solitary predation doesn't have any systematic coverage. The two major behaviors, pursuit predation and ambush predation, each have substantial arguments but little of the content is summarized in the parent article. That is especially true of the taxonomy of predation (e.g., its use by vertebrates, invertebrates, microorganisms). In the section on coevolution with prey, there is no mention of shells or other armor and strategies to deal with them. In Role in ecosystems, apex predators are mentioned but their ecological importance is not discussed (which is ironic since the article on apex predators is a GA-level article written by the nominator of this article). ANd what about the relationship between predation and scavenging, which is practiced by many predators? There may be more omissions, but that will do.

The digressions on other kinds of heterotrophs could be easily fixed by deleting content; but the omissions will take a lot of work to fix. Therefore, I mark this nomination Failed. RockMagnetist(talk) 18:37, 2 September 2018 (UTC)