User:Beachwaves/Symbiotic bacteria/Leafcutter Ant Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

Beachwaves


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Beachwaves/Symbiotic_bacteria?veaction=edit&preload=Template%3ADashboard.wikiedu.org_draft_template
 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Symbiotic bacteria

Lead

 * Has the Lead been updated to reflect the new content added by your peer? The lead has not been updated to reflect the changes made in the sandbox. I think that the lead should be reworked, since the new material you plan on adding includes a more detailed explanation of the termite example given in the article's lead. It might work to incorporate the "Definition" section into the lead instead, so that readers can get the most important information first.


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic? While concise, the lead on the existing article does little to describe the article's topic: "Symbiotic bacteria are bacteria living in symbiosis with another organism or each other." This intro provides little context, and uses the word it seeks to define in the definition, which isn't very helpful. Like I mention above, it might be nice to provide a concise definition of symbiosis in the lead, but still keep the "Definition" section immediately following it.


 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections? No. This can be improved by adding a sentence at the end of the lead hinting at the fact 1) that there are examples of symbiotic bacteria among many organisms and 2) that there have been well-researched "benefits" from a particular organism or species relying on symbiosis.

Content

 * Is the content added relevant to the topic? Yes! The content added provides a much richer introduction on the topic of Symbiotic Bacteria. I thought that all the examples you provided were incredibly insightful and told a different story about


 * Is the content added up-to-date? Yes -- due to the nature of scientific findings, the research presented does not need to be "current" for it to be "up-to-date."


 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong? I found that the section on symbiotic gut fauna in humans was kind of out of place. It starts by mentioning that "The human gut contains a maximum capacity of one hundred trillion microbes," which does not really mean anything to me. What is "maximum capacity"? Overflowing to the brim? Or are these just the highest abundances found in nature? Furthermore, the paragraph centers around how the immune system has difficulty telling the difference between good and bad bacteria when fighting infection, so probiotics should be taken along with any prescribed antibiotics to reduce the damage to beneficial symbiotic bacteria. To me, this section belongs in the "Benefits of Symbiotic Bacteria," because it does not give any specific examples of gut-dwelling bacteria.

Tone and Balance

 * Is the content added neutral? For the most part. There are claims that might be contested -- you might find a doctor who will argue against people taking probiotics, even though you only share the side which states that probiotics could be helpful. I found a generic Probiotics page from the NIH that talks about both the positives and negatives of taking them: https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/probiotics-what-you-need-to-know. Furthermore, many of the examples of symbiotic bacteria begin with phrases like "It is well accepted and understood that...".Scientists disagree all the time, so I think you might want to refrain from speaking in absolutes when its not necessary -- you're just providing info on a research paper, not determining where there is or is not scientific consensus.


 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? n/a


 * Does the content added attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another ? n/a

Sources and References

 * Is all new content backed up by a reliable secondary source of information? Yes!


 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic? For the most part, the sources are thorough in exploring the topics written about. As I mention earlier though, there are a few topics that might have differing viewpoints (like whether everyone should be taking probiotics, for example) and including something that can be interpreted as medical advice on Wikipedia without qualifying it with the potential risks for immunocompromised people could be damaging.


 * Are the sources current? For the most part, they are from the 21st century!


 * Are there better sources available, such as peer-reviewed articles in place of news coverage or random websites? (You may need to do some digging to answer this. ) The sources that you have from Science Friday, News-Medical.net and Lumen Learning do not seem to be entirely credible. They are scientific blog posts, and you might be better off finding peer reviewed articles or thorough literature reviews on symbiotic bacteria to cite instead. On top of this, it seems that multiple sources are cited twice with different bibliographic entries, so you would want to fix that as well.


 * Check a few links. Do they work? Yup!

Organization

 * Is the content added well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read? The content is well-written, and I did not have any problems reading through the article. Overall an easy read.


 * Does the content added have any grammatical or spelling errors? There are some Wikipedia-specific errors -- "Endosymbionts" in the Endosymbiosis section is not fully highlighted, and the first sentence of the Coral section has a hanging closing bracket. I also see that in a few places you put the citations within the sentences instead of at the end -- I am pretty sure the convention on Wikipedia is to almost always cite at the very end of the sentence, and I think it would be less distracting if you fixed that.

As I mentioned above, I think that there could be more informative ways to split up your Examples of Symbiotic Relationships section. It would be great to structure this by highlighting what characteristic of symbiotic relationships each example could help illustrate, and then using the examples as context and not the main point of the section. Additionally, I think that some information is misplaced. In the Corals section, you have this passage:
 * Is the content added well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

"Due to the small size of the genome of most endosymbionts, they are unable to exist for any length of time outside of the host cell, thereby preventing a long-term symbiotic relationship. However, in the case of the endonuclear symbiotic bacterium Holospora, it has been discovered that Holospora species can maintain their infectivity for a limited time and form a symbiotic relationship with Paramecium species."

However, the original article does not specifically tie this to corals but to endosymbiotic bacteria as a whole. Thus, including it in the Corals section without mentioning that it applies to endosymbionts in all cases is misleading.

Overall impressions

 * Has the content added improved the overall quality of the article - i.e. Is the article more complete? Yes! I thought that your additions to the definition and ecto/endosymbiosis sections are very very useful to readers. The other information you have added is fantastic as well, I would just like for it to be structured in the form of key characteristics of symbiotic bacteria than just filling out the article with select examples of it in nature.


 * What are the strengths of the content added? The article is well-researched and very well-written!


 * How can the content added be improved? My main critique on the article is simply with the structure of the Examples of Symbiotic Relationships section. You did a great job researching and finding examples of symbiotic relationships, but I would like to see more synthesis of these examples into characteristics of symbiotic bacteria (typical life histories, transmission, whether they are purloining resources or engaging in other forms of mutualism etc. etc.). I think that would take the article to an even higher level. Great job!