User:Burner112/sandbox

Week 14
Fixed some grammatical errors in the venom section of the Stingray page. Image and image caption appear to be in order.

Week 13
I added my entire draft, including my picture, onto the live Stingray page. I created a "Venom" sub-heading under the "Anatomy" heading. Along with the additions, I also changed inaccurate facts about the venom that existed on the page.

Week 12
Moving a part of my draft to the live Stingray page.

I moved "The toxins that have been confirmed to be within the venom are cystatins, peroxiredoxin, and galectin. " to the live page.

As I was on the page, I noticed that the current author said the venom was stored in a gland. This is false, but I wanted to wait to change it until I have practiced making live changes more.

Group Plan
Everyone will be contributing to the Stingray Page.

Sarah
Picture: Stinger of the Stingray's Tail

Nathan
Picture: Dorsal view of Stingray fin with placoid scales partially removed.

Azana
Image of the teeth on the lower tooth band of the stingray. Also added ventral view image.

Derek
New image added with arrows to show where the spiracles are.

Venom
The venom of the stingray has been relatively unstudied due to the mixture of venomous tissue cells and mucous membrane cells that occurs upon secretion from the spinal blade/stinger. Stingrays can have anywhere between 1-3 blades. The spine is covered with the epidermal skin layer. During secretion, the venom punctures through the epidermis to release the venom on its victim. Typically, other venomous organisms create and store their venom in a gland. The stingray is notable in that it stores its venom within tissue cells. The toxins that have been confirmed to be within the venom are cystatins, peroxiredoxin, and galectin. Galectin induces cell death in its victims and cystatins inhibits defense enzymes. In humans, these toxins lead to increased blood flow in the superficial capillaries and cell death. Despite the number of cells and toxins that are within the stingray, there is little relative energy required to produce and store the venom. The venom is produced and stored in the secretory cells of the vertebral column at the mid-distal region. These secretory cells are housed within the ventrolateral grooves of the spine. The cells of both marine and freshwater stingrays are round and contain a great amount of granule-filled cytoplasm. The cells of marine stingrays are located only within these lateral grooves of the stinger. The cells of freshwater stingray branch out beyond the lateral grooves to cover a larger surface area along the entire blade. Due to this large area and an increased number of proteins within the cells, the venom of freshwater stingrays has a greater toxicity than that of marine stingrays.

Picture Proposal
This week in lab I was able to take pictures using the camera on the high intensity dissection scope. I forgot to email them to myself so they are still currently on the computer. I will get those next week in lab. As of right now, here is one of the pictures I was able to take of my phone. I plan to add labels to the pictures so that it is clear what specifically is the spinal blade. Due to the juvenile age of our dissected stingray, the spinal blade is not as noticeable as it would be on an adult.

Locomotion
The stingray uses Median Paired Fins (MPF) opposed to pure undulations by a singular caudal fin. Stingray pelvic fin locomotion can be divided into two categories undulatory and oscillatory. Stingrays who use undulatory locomotion have shorter thicker fins for slower motile movements in benthic areas. Longer thinner pectoral fins make for faster speeds in oscillation mobility in pelagic zones. Visually distinguishable oscillation has less than one wave going, opposed to undulation having more than one wave at all times.

Jaws/Teeth
The mouth of the stingray is located on the ventral side of the species. Stringrays exhibit euhyostyly jaw suspension, which means that the mandibular arch is only suspended by a articulation with the hyomandibula. This type of suspensions allows for the upper jaw to have high mobility and protrude outward. The teeth are modified placoid scale s that are regularly shedded and replaced. In general, the teeth have a root implanted within the connective tissue and a visual portion of the tooth, which are large and flat, allowing them to crush the of hard shelled prey. Male stingrays displaysexual dimorphism by developing cusp, or pointed ends, to their teeth during mating season, which then return to baseline during non-mating seasons.

Spiracle
The stingrays respiratory system is rather complex, as they have two separate ways to take in water to utilize the oxygen. Most of the time stingrays will pull in water using their mouth, which then is sent through the gills for gas exchange. While efficient, they are unable to use their mouth when hunting as they bury themselves in the ocean floor waiting for prey to swim by. Thus, while hunting the stingray utilizes its second respiratory system, called a spiracle, which is an opening on the dorsal side of the head that is just caudal to their eyes. With the spiracle, can draw water directly into their gills for gas exchange. This system is less efficient as the spiracle is unable to pull in the same volume of water as the mouth, however it is plenty for the stingray to survive on while awaiting its prey.

Feedback Responses
These additions will be made on the Stingray page on Wikipedia. At the moment, there is no anatomy section on this page. Our group plans to add an Anatomy section on the Stingray page and then have the following topics of venom, locomotion, jaws/teeth, and spiracle as sub topics. These four areas were some of the most vital topics to be covered within the anatomy of the stingray.

Comments from Dr. Schutz:
 * Great job being thorough in your response to reviews. This will help you greatly as you develop that second draft.
 * As you work through your drafts, be sure to use the rubric I provided to guide you
 * I like the idea of planning your contribution and what pages you will be contributing to.
 * For the venom section: Do not be distressed if you cannot find the cells in your specimen. What you may be better able to do is use your animal to show where on the body those cells may be.
 * Have you seen this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_injury

Venom
The venom of the stingray has been relatively unstudied. This is because when the venom is released, it also contains mucus from the external layer of the stingray. Due to the mixture of mucus in the venom, researchers have struggled when aiming to test the chemical content of only the venom. The mucus contaminates the sample. The venom is produced and stored in the secretory cells of the vertebral column at the mid-distal region. Typically, other venomous organisms create and store their venom in a separate gland. The toxins that have been confirmed to be within the venom are cystatins, peroxiredoxin, and galectin. Galectin induces cell death in its victims and cystatins inhibits defense enzymes. In humans, these toxins lead to increased blood flow in the superficial capillaries and cell death.

Changes Made and Not Made
All changes can be seen above. I fixed all of the grammatical errors that my colleagues pointed out. I added links to current Wikipedia pages. I have all of my citations in the correct formatting for Wikipedia now and they can be seen at the bottom of the sandbox. I am in the process of finding more review articles to use as resources so that they are not all primary literature articles. Our group also clarified, up above, what exact page and section we would be focusing on for a more clear understanding of our plans.

One colleague made the suggestion that we focus on topics such as taxonomy and reproduction. While we plan on possibly reviewing these topics, we do not plan to focus on these as we don't want to spread ourselves too thin. Through the process of editing, we may come to tweak some of those areas, even if they are not in our plans right now.

Plans Looking Forward
My future plans for the research include more on the actions and placement of the secretory cells, as well as the potency of the stingray's venom.

I still plan to use dissection pictures of the stingray. I plan to use the high-tech dissection microscope in lab to see the secretory cells. There is also a book in the museum that I plan to use for pictures and as another resource.

Locomotion
Reply

The organization I plan on keeping relatively the same with some minor adjustments in links, citations, and footnotes. The largest concern seemed to be correlated with how I kept specifically to Wikipedia standards. We will be incorporating a single bibliography on the existing stingray page. I would be open to a collaboration with the person doing locomotion on the skate. In the suggestions for fish examples and big word definitions I will be adding links instead to keep the section simplified.

Modifications

The stingray uses Median Paired Fins (MPF) opposed to pure undulations where the caudal fin is the source of locomotion. MPF provides quicker and more accurate movement needed for benthic organisms. The wave-like motion is performed by coordinated sequential movements between the pectoral and pelvic fins. The pectoral fins preform an undulation followed by a pelvic fin pull on the benthic floor.

Responses to individual feedback:

 * Someone pointed out that my sentences read like bullet points. I agree with this and noticed when making my initial draft that some of my sentences need to be restructured and are choppy to read, which I plan on editing.
 * There were a few typos in my section, which I also plan on editing. I will make sure in my second draft to double check for things like this.
 * My information is scattered (as pointed out by one of my peers). My plan for this section was to provide general information about the stingray and incorporate our individual dissection topics into it. The information right now is scattered because I am not sure how exactly how we plan to structure it as a group yet. It was just overall easier for me to separated the information I obtained into separate sentences at the time, but it all will be orchestrated into an entire section.

Responses to overall group feedback:

 * We need to discuss how and what order we are going to contribute our drafts to the general anatomy section of the stingray page. This will probably have to be done when all of our individual drafts are close to being finished that way we can actually start to compile everything together.
 * We were asked to clarify if this will be a new page or an addition to the actual stingray page. I was planning on adding the section to the actual stingray page. This will also be something we have to discuss as a group.

Spiracle
Going back to the draft, I plan on adding the link to the spiracle page where it was first used.I also plan to implement the grammar fixes noted in the copy edit. Regarding the images, I will search for images on Wikipedia that might be of use, but due to this section being particularly about the stingray's spiracle I think it might be more useful to try and use my own images from our groups dissection. Overall I'm not opposed to using both, I just think having my own images will be useful. I also still plan to annotate the images where appropriate to fit well with my contribution to the page. I also think I will do some research on the muscles for the spiracle and try to include that in my contribution.

Aside from my own, I like the suggestion about ensuring that when this is added to the page to coordinate with the other group members to make it flow as smoothly as possible, but this is something that I think is best accomplished towards the end near publishing.

Thanks for all of the feedback!

Week 8
Spring Break--No assignments

Week 7
Here are the two reviews that I gave. The first was to the Moray Eel article draft. The second was to the Bat article draft.

Moray Eel Review.
Your content reflects neutrality very well. The sources appear to be reliable as well as most of them are peer reviewed journal articles so good choices on that. They are formatted correctly according to Wikipedia. I was confused on how pleomerism related to the paragraph above. I would also include an image proposal. Your picture proposals are very informative. Copy Edit Here are revisions I made to portions of the article.
 * Kristi, I believe you have a good start on the evolutionary history section. I would try to add more details about the fin location of the Muraeninae and the Uropterygiinae. Possibly add why the fin locations were evolutionarily important and how their fin evolution lead to their adaptation.
 * Nathan and Kristi, I think you guys could also combine your topics by speaking on the evolutionary history of jaws.
 * Nathan, I believe you have a good start on your article topic. It is quite interesting considering their use of the jaw over suction feeding. I would see if you can add what makes up the jaw as well as what contributes to its protraction from the body.
 * Trisha, I would like to see more specific examples of moray eel species that live in saltwater habitats and what differentiates them freshwater eels to live in the habitats that they do.

In Muraeninae the dorsal fin is found near the gill slits and run runs all the way down the back of the eel. The anal fin is just behind the anus.[1] The Uropterygiinnae, on the other hand, are defined by both their dorsal and anal fin being located at the end of their tails.[1]

Pleomerism is the process of elongation due to the increase in number of vertebra.[

In the action of lunging at prey and biting down, water flows out the posterior side of the mouth opening, reducing waves in front of the eel and allowing the eel to bite down on prey without the aid of negative pressure. This creates a longer bite time but also increases the aggressiveness of the approach in predation.

Bat
All of the drafts reflect neutrality. All of the sections need to have picture proposals or plans on what you plan to take a picture of during dissection.

Lianne, your section is very informative and I think it would be an important article to add to the microbat page. I would suggest either having links to another Wikipedia page on RGBC’s or explaining them more as the average reader will probably not know much about them and their function. By breaking down what RGBC’s do, it will help the clarity of your draft.

Jimmy, I think you could expand more on the fluid intake of the bat. This could include how they take in fluid physiologically and how long they can store it before they need to intake more. I would like to see what your plan is for your picture proposal. You may consider doing a flow chart to show where the fluid enters and exits the bat.

Frankee, your information is very informative and would be good areas to explore. I really liked the physiological comparisons you made between bats and other organisms such as birds. I was confused on what your exact topic was since you covered flight, energy, the heart and reproduction. All of which were factually explained but I was unsure on how they all connected. What is your picture proposal?

Copy Edit

General retinal elements, such as rod and cone bipolar cells, all amacrine cells, RGBCs (retinal ganglion cells), and retinofugal projections, contribute to the microbat's visual ability;

These cells are responsible for the microbat's ability to respond to light and play a role in both non-image forming vision, such as circadian rhythms, sleep regulation, and pupil responses, as well as image forming vision.

They are more prone to rapid dehydration since 80% of their body surface is naked of hair.

One of these includes options of migration where they cover large masses of land on search of resources as well as crossing land masses that are difficult to cross on land, such as mountains, water and desserts.

They expend twice as much oxygen than their running transportation counterparts

=Week 6 =

Venom
The venom of the stingray has been relatively unstudied at the current moment. This is because when the venom is released, it also contains mucus from the external layer of the stingray. Do to the mixture of mucus in venom, researchers have struggled when aiming to test the chemical content of only the venom and not have the mucus get contaminate the sample. There has been one study that was successful in separating the mucus and the venom from each other. What we do know is that the venom is produced and stored in the secretory cells of the spine at the mid-distal region (da Silva Jr., N., et. al., 2015). Typically, other venomous creatures have been known to create and store their venom in a separate gland. The toxins that have been confirmed to be within the venom are cystatins, peroxiredoxin, and galectin (Baumann, K., et. al., 2014). Galectin induces cell death in its victims and cystatins inhibits defense enzymes. In humans, these toxins lead to increased blood flow in the superficial capillaries and cell death (Dos Santos., et. al., 2017).

References that I plan to use in the article
Stingray from a caudal view Baumann, K., Casewell, N. R., Ali, S. A., Jackson, T. W., Vetter, I., Dobson, J. S., & ... Fry, B. G. (2014). A ray of venom: Combined proteomic and transcriptomic investigation of fish venom composition using barb tissue from the blue-spotted stingray (Neotrygon kuhlii). Journal Of Proteomics, 109188-198. doi:10.1016/j.jprot.2014.06.004

Dos Santos, J. C., Grund, L. Z., Seibert, C. S., Marques, E. E., Soares, A. B., Quesniaux, V. F., & ... Lima, C. (2017). Stingray venom activates IL-33 producing cardiomyocytes, but not mast cell, to promote acute neutrophil-mediated injury. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 7912. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-08395-y

Picture Proposal
So far I have found these two pictures using creative commons and they are CC 0. I plan to also get pictures during dissection of the actual stinger as well as possibly a microscope picture of the secretory cells that hold the venom.

Locomotion
The stingray uses Median Paired Fins (MPF) opposed to pure undulations where the caudal fin is the source of locomotion. MPF provides quicker and more accurate movement needed for benthic organisms (Wang, Y., et al., 2015). The wave-like motion is performed by coordinated sequential movements between the pectoral and pelvic fins. The pectoral fins preform an undulation followed by a pelvic fin pull on the benthic floor (Macesic, L., et al., 2013).

Picture proposal
Still looking for a proper picture showing the wave-like motion to add a visual to the description.

Anatomy of stingrays:
I couldn't find enough information at this time to solely work on the jaws/teeth of the stingrays and noticed that there is not an anatomy or true characteristics portion of the page, therefore I think that I want to make a section for this. I think that the work that other's in the team will also be great to add in. For the dissection portion of the project I plan on focusing my work on the teeth and jaws. I have started to work on putting the general anatomy section together below:

Stingrays are composed of cartilaginous skeletons with portions that are strengthen through the process of calcification. The cartilage allows the fish to stay afloat despite its lack a swim bladder.

The vertebral column of the stingray is composed of the pre-caudal and caudal vertebrate, with the pre-caudal forming first.

Stingrays are counter shaded, meaning the dorsal side is darker than the ventral side allowing for the stingray to camouflage with it's surroundings whether it is swimming around or at the bottom of the ocean.

The mouth of the stingrays are located on the ventral side of the animal. The teeth are large, modified placid scales that have the appearance of flat plates which aid in the crushing of hard shelled prey.

Additional sources:
Serena, F. (2005). Field Identification Guide to the Sharks and Rays of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. p. 68. ISBN 92-5-105291-3.

Image plan(s)
I would like to be able to dissect out the jaw with teeth attached during our dissection of the stingray to take my own photos of them.If I am unable to do this, then will find online images.

Spiracle
The stingrays respiratory is rather complex, as they have two separate ways to take in water to utilize the oxygen. Most of the time stingrays will pull in water using their mouth, which then is sent through the gills for gas exchange. While efficient, they are unable to use their mouth when hunting as they bury themselves in the ocean floor waiting for prey to swim by. This is where their second system comes into play, using a dorsal opening on the head called a spiracle, they can draw in water directly into their gills for gas exchange. While this system is less efficient as the spiracle is unable to pull in the same amount of water as the mouth, it is plenty for the stingray to survive on while awaiting its prey.

Picture plan:
During our dissection of the stingray, I will take pictures of the external view of the stingray, as well as the muscles involved in the control of the spiracle. If needed, the pictures will be annotated to show exactly what is being discussed in the paragraph.

=Week 5=

Stingray Topics

 * Venom. The venom of a stingray is held in its spine. The amount of toxicity varies depending on the type of stingray. The level of toxicity decreases as the stingray reaches maturity which suggests there is less of a biological need for it as it grows in size. Sarah
 * Locomotion. The stingray uses Median Paired Fins (MPF) opposed to undulations where the caudal fin is the source of locomotion. MPF provides quicker and more accurate movement needed for shallower waters. Nathan
 * Respiratory System. Discuss how string rays perform gas exchange. Make note of the spiracle and its usefulness for organisms such as the ray. Also, provide labeled pictures of different structures relevant to the respiratory system. Derek
 * Jaws and teeth. Discuss the the mechanics of the cartilaginous jaws and teeth (essentially rows of flat plates) in relation to feeding habits of the sting ray and include supplementary images of the jaw and teeth. Azana

Comments from Dr. Schutz:
Begin your work for next week by considering the following next steps: Osquaesitor (talk) 00:26, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Good start. You have identified some good gaps and found potentially great references.
 * Who is working on what section? Please list that in your group page. Recall that in week 2 (see the timeline) I have given you examples of various ways to organize your sandboxes from previous students. Check those out again.
 * How will you integrate each others edits? This may not be clear now and not always possible, but it should be attempted.
 * What kinds of images/illustrations will be useful for you to find (see info on appropriate use of images)/produce and contribute?
 * Many images can come directly from the dissections you will do, so think about how you want to approach that. Also, look ahead to week 11. The description for that assignment has numerous links to useful information for the appropriate use of images etc.
 * Start drafting some content as you prepare for this coming week when you will have your first draft due. Take the time in lab to chat this out as you take a dissection break.
 * How will you approach your dissection?
 * Ask me in lab for your study animal so that you can make a plan and maybe start the de-fleshing process for the old bat we have.
 * Make sure all team members complete all training!
 * When asking for help (which is great) you will have better outcomes if you ask for specific feedback.

=Week 4= Dissection Choices My first choice of dissection organism is a stingray. I am curious about how the stingray's venom is released from its body and how it is stored so that it does not infect the stingray itself. One of the related url's to my species is Stingray injury or the general wikipedia page on Skate (fish).

My second dissection choice is the Rattlesnake. I am curious about how the organs of a snake are stored in a body that lacks width. I am also curious about how the side to side movement of the snake affects the internal skeleton of the snake. I would like to add more information on the anatomy of a rattlesnake such as their digestive system in the article Rattlesnake. I also had the opportunity to work with snakes in Uganda this past January so I have a personal connection to them.

My third dissection choice is a bat. I would like to learn more about how the larynx allows for echolocation of the bat. An article that I would like to edit is Animal echolocation.

=Week 3= I added the following material onto the article, "Primitive (phylogenetics)"

Cladograms are important for scientists as they allow them to classify and hypothesize the origin and future of organisms. Cladograms allow scientists to propose their evolutionary scenarios about the lineage from a primitive trait to a derived one. By understanding how the trait came to be, scientists can hypothesize the environment that specific organism was in and how that affected the evolutionary adaptations of the trait that came to be.

Citation:

Week 2
"Article Evaluation"
 * I believe that all of the information in the article is relevant to the topic. There was nothing distracting on the page, but that being said, I don't believe there was enough. I would have liked to see a simple phylogeny to show a visual of a common ancestor of a clade, when describing a primitive circumstance.
 * The article was neutral by showing no source of favoritism.
 * I felt that the shortness of the length of the article lead to viewpoints being underrepresented. I think the examples could have been more in depth and there could have been a greater explanation on how biologists designate a primitive feature of that species in terms of evolution.
 * The citations follow proper formatting. The third citation did not have a link to the title. The sources supported the information, except the entire first section, that contained numerous definitions, had no footnotes to citations.
 * I do not believe that all of the facts given were cited correctly. The opening section offered numerous definitions with no citation. The definitions given appeared to be correct, but with no citation it could be seen as plagiarism. However, the definitions did have links to other Wikipedia articles, so if those are counted as citations, then it would be acceptable. The sources cited are neutral and from credible authors or institutions.
 * An instance of plagiarism as stated above could be in the first section. Numerous definitions were given without any footnotes. There were links to other Wikipedia pages, but that is questionable if it was an actual citation especially since the Wikipedia pages could have unreliable citations themselves.
 * There is no out of date information.
 * The talk pages of this article seem to involve discussion between the author and other Wikipedians. They had disputes over citations as well as the author's style of writing. Based on the discussion, the author removed some of his sources that were there originally.
 * This article is a part of WikiProject Evolutionary Biology. There was no rating yet on the quality scale or the importance scale.
 * This Wikipedia article did not go as in depth as our class has or the text book. Our class discussed the importance of primitive designation from a biologist standpoint whereas this article seemed to be from a non-scientific person's standpoint.

Group Question ":Why did the author use multiple variations of primitive and advanced outside of the synonyms paragraph? This made it difficult to follow as a reader.""Suggestions for the author: Stick with primitive and advanced except in the part of the article where synonyms (usage) are discussed."User:Burner112/sandbox