User:Beccyw/Maternal behavior in vertebrates/RandomCitizen27 Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

Beccyw


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Beccyw/Maternal_behavior_in_vertebrates?veaction=edit&preload=Template%3ADashboard.wikiedu.org_draft_template


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Maternal behavior in vertebrates

Evaluate the drafted changes
Hi Beccyw! You have a very well written and well referenced article draft, great work! Below I have made suggestions to make some sentences more clear, examples you could add, and pointed out some typos to fix.

Lead:

Great lead! My only critiques are that you have a period after your first citation, and perhaps you could briefly mention that "maternal care is exhibited by" and then list the different animals that you go through as a lead-in to the rest of your article's content. I think it would be a good idea to address the range of behaviors that encompass maternal care, not just "lactating or gathering food, grooming young, and keeping the young warm," but also the behaviors that aren't considered, such as egg laying.

Photos:

I love all the photos you added! They were very good choices and help with visualizing the content. Just ensure that all of the scientific names are italicized in their descriptions.

Fish:

I would add a little caveat to your fish introduction by saying that while most fish do not exhibit maternal (or parental care), there are certain species that do. You could also mention here any specific fish families that have maternal care, such as the cichlids that you mention further down.

Great example with the cichlids! My only question is why do they remove underdeveloped eggs from the nest, and why is this considered maternal care? If you decide to expand on this, you could elaborate on why this specific behavior is adaptive.

Add a space before "Many cichlid species."

Under the mouthbrooding section: consider changing "a lot of cichlid species" to "several cichlid species." I think that "mouthbrood" is two words.

"In maternal mouthbrooders after the eggs are laid the mother scoops them into her mouth and keeps them there, sometimes for multiple weeks, during which she will not eat and will put all her energy into caring for her young. " I suggest splitting this sentence in to two sentences to avoid a comma splice by putting a period after "weeks" and saying "During this time she...".

In ovoviviparous section: Add a space before the phrase "Ovoviviparous fish embryos mostly get their nutrients..."

You could add an example of a fish that exhibits this behavior (of gestation being the only parental care).

Amphibians:

Great introductory paragraph! I really like the last sentence that outlines the variety of maternal behaviors in amphibians.

Consider including an explanation as to what "ventral brooding" is.

The frogs that oxygenate their eggs, how do they move them around? With their mouths, or limbs? how much do they move them? I suggest adding an example species to illustrate this concept further.

caecilians section: "Once young with an aquatic stage hatch they are able to survive on their own in the water without any more maternal care, however other young are altricial when they hatch, and rely on their mother to look after them until they develop enough to live fully on land. " This sentence is very long winded; consider breaking it in to two.

Brood parasitism:

For this introductory sentence I suggest adding in how even though this is not the offspring's own mother caring for their young, it is the host mother that provides maternal care to the parasite offspring.

In birds:

Your first sentence ("The parasitic birds do not display maternal behaviors and have therefore evolved ways to ensure the success of their offspring by having it be raised by a host.") implies that parasitic birds evolved brood parasitism because they did not have any parental care to begin with. This is misleading because parental care is an ancestral trait in birds, and they instead evolved to be parasitic and in doing so lost the maternal care trait. Please change this sentence to reflect this.

Rather than the word "effected" in the sentence "As a result, the host birds* natural maternal behaviors are effected and they often neglect to care for their own offspring. " I recommend the word "co-opted." instead. *Add an apostrophe to this for pluralization.

I most definitely recommend adding more examples to this section on birds; The cuckoo bird (a full brood parasite) would be a fantastic example. You could lead in to it by saying: "an example of a an obligate brood parasite is...". I also recommend elaborating on what you mean by "this behavior is exhibited to a certain degree by many different birds," as I am not sure what this spectrum entails. An example of a species that uses brood parasitism "to a certain degree" would be very welcome and would help to explain this idea.

Brood parasitism in fish:

It would be fun to explain how this cuckoo fish got its name because it was named after the cuckoo bird for exhibiting the same behavior :).

I would also explain how the cuckoo fish eating the host eggs not only gives the cuckoo fish's offspring nutrition, but also reduces the cichlid's fitness to zero.

Other:

A great section to add to this paper would be maternal care in whales. It is very common in these animals and very well researched. You could even add in how even grandmother whales care for the young in the pods. See the article "Post reproductive killer whale grandmothers improve the survival of their grand offspring" by Stuart Nattrass et al. (2019) for more information on grandmother maternal care.

I really recommend expanding the section on reptiles as well because it is labelled as needing expansion.

I suggest adding an example of a specific primate that exhibits maternal care in the manner explained in the text. A photo to go along with this section would be great as well, even if you don't elaborate more on this section!

Great references section! You added a lot of solid resources. Your paragraphs are very well referenced.

All in all, great job!