Polistes exclamans has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones Date Process Result January 21, 2013 Good article nominee Listed

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Insects: Hymenoptera Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Insects, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of insects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.InsectsWikipedia:WikiProject InsectsTemplate:WikiProject InsectsInsects articles Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by Hymenoptera task force (assessed as Mid-importance).

This article was the subject of an educational assignment in Fall 2014. Further details were available on the "Education Program:Washington University in St. Louis/Behavioral Ecology (Fall 2014)" page, which is now unavailable on the wiki.

Well this is already a good article isn't it? Haha, well its nice, A range map could be added for this species though, but thats about the only thing missing. Currently theres some Wikipedia warning thing about linking to too many disambiguation pages, I'm not exactly sure what that means but you could look into fixing it. There was a spot where it appears italics weren’t turned off so the whole second half of the paragraph was in italics for no reason, I fixed that. There were many spots where I did some mild rephrasing. Overall this is a delightful article. Whenever there is a random obscure word that I don't know, it links to another page (ex. diapause) which is a great alternative to bulky in text explanations. Annamargit ( talk) 04:44, 21 November 2014 (UTC) reply

Overall, this page is thorough and well written. The main edits I’ve made have been linking the page to other pages. For example, I linked the “Vespidae” page to this page. I also linked all of the species listed in the last sentence in the “Taxonomy and Phylogeny” section to their Wikipedia pages, for those that had pages. In the following sentence (found in the “Description and Identification” section) the pronoun it is unclear: “It also may have yellow markings on its head.” In the “Distribution and Habitat” section, the following quote is missing a citation: “As indicated by Strassmann and Orgren, “Nests are approximately circular, and have a single off-center pedicel usually located towards the top of the nest. Cells near the pedicle are the oldest.” Since this part was quoted it is essential that a source is listed. Moreover, the page could be further developed by adding a distribution map or conservation information. Finally, the following sentence (in “Queen Characteristics”) has 2 citations: “P. exclamans lives in a hierarchical society with one queen that lays the eggs. However, all of the females have the same morphology and they all have the physiological capability of taking over the egg laying if necessary (queen death, queen migration).[8][13] “ It would be best if you could break up the citations such that the reader could determine what material came from which reference. The same goes for the second sentence in the “Description and Identification” section.

Alison Gozlan ( talk) 04:52, 24 October 2014 (UTC) reply

Hey everyone,

I created this article for a class and will be continuing to edit and add to it throughout the next couple of months. This is just a first copy so there will be more content and fine tuning on the way. If you have any comments or feedback please let me know, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks, -- Jeremy.winkler ( talk) 06:45, 9 October 2012 (UTC) reply

This is a great start to the article. I really learned a lot about the behavior of the species! I mostly edited for grammar, word choice, and concision. There were several minor errors in punctuation and syntax which I fixed. I also changed some of your words to ones that I felt fit better. As far as concision, I just took out repetitive parts of sentences and combined others. For recommendations, I think that a lot of information about this species needs to be added. I know that you started the article, and we are only focusing on behavior, but a little bit more background on the species would be nice. It would also be great if you could find a picture to add. I think this will give your reader a better idea of the animal that you are writing about. Your headings could use some work. According to the guidelines for naming sections on the insects project, almost everything you have should fall under behavior and ecology or reproduction. You might want to look at the article for the ant for some more recommendations. I think it is a featured article, and it might be helpful if you mirrored the structure of yours after it to increase the rating of this article. E.middlebrook ( talk) 21:58, 16 October 2012 (UTC) reply

My edits were similar to the previous edits. I found that I mainly corrected repetition of phrases and pronoun usage. For many pronouns, "them" wasn't quite clear enough in regard to whom you were referring to. I agree with many of the comments above me. The article will really improve greatly if you added some photos and some other background information. This would allow you to have major topics such as behavior that contain subtopics, like you have now. It is a great start to the article and is well on its way. In the future, be careful of being too repetitive and using too many pronouns. Katims90 ( talk) 22:28, 16 October 2012 (UTC) reply

This is overall a great article with lots of materials. I re-organized some sentences to make the article flow well. I also corrected some grammatical mistakes and edited unclear pronouns. I know you started this article and wrote mainly about behaviors and ecology, so I added a heading to include all the subsections. I made some additional links to other Wikipedia pages. To make the article more complete, you might add a few pictures and some descriptions about this organism outside the scope of behaviors. I tried to look for images online but not sure if they were for fair use, so I ended up not uploading them, but it would be nice if you could add one in the infobox. Ps. I am confused about one thing under the section of "satellite nests". On the fist line, it reads "A queen will fly somewhere between .15-11m away". Here do you mean 0.15-11m? It will be helpful if you could clarify.-- Tianyi Cai ( talk) 00:31, 17 October 2012 (UTC) reply

Jeremy, great job on this article! There was a lot of great information on the species, and I really learned a lot from reading your additions. I mainly made grammar/wording changes and cleaned up some fragments. I also added a few hyperlinks here and there. I had a question about the difference between the two parasitic moth species. Under the Parasitoids section, you started to talk about their exact difference by mentioning that the C. iphitalis waits around outside of the nest for (wasp?)larvae to emerge, but what exactly does the E. polistis do differently? Does it just directly attack the wasps in the nests after reproducing? Ihyuan ( talk) 16:29, 20 November 2012 (UTC) reply

I made some grammar/wording changes and added a few hyperlinks. I also italicized P. exclamans multiple times and reformatted the degree symbol. Overall good job. Zhangt2413 ( talk) 06:58, 21 November 2012 (UTC) reply

Great job so far! This article has come a long way since you created it. After the other two reviewers looked through it, many of my changes were minor pieces that needed touching up. I worked partially on grammar, and some linking to other Wiki articles. One thought to consider is maybe rearranging the sub-headings and their names. For example, having a morphology section where you can talk about differences between queen and worker castes, a reproduction section to discuss queen determination, sexual attraction, parasitism, etc. A section on etymology and another on phylogeny would be helpful, too. Otherwise, things look good here- I'm excited to track the progress of the page! Nsavalia23 ( talk) 05:23, 26 November 2012 (UTC) reply

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Polistes exclamans/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Choess ( talk · contribs) 02:57, 30 November 2012 (UTC) reply

Hi, I'm Choess. I'm a longtime editor here and I've written several biology GAs, so I feel comfortable looking over your article. I'm going to start by just going through the article top-to-bottom and listing my observations as I make them. When I'm done, I'll sort them out to see which of my comments specifically apply to Good Article criteria and which are not applicable (but are probably good things to do!) Choess ( talk) 02:57, 30 November 2012 (UTC) reply

• The beginning of the article does not follow WP:LEAD. "The lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview. It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points—including any prominent controversies." Most of the facts in the present lead should be dispersed into appropriate sections in the article, and the lead should be re-written as the quotation above suggests. From my personal experience, I often write only a sentence or two in the lead until I'm done the rest of the article. Then I look it back over and try to summarize it to create the lead.
• The first source cited (Sepa, Queller & Strassmann, 2002) is about Polistes carolina, not Polistes exclamans! It is by no means clear that all the findings about P. carolina apply to P. exclamans. This reference is cited to say that P. exclamans "are also unique in the fact that they have been observed occupying artificial nesting places". If this refers to the "wooden boxes" used by Sepa, Queller & Strassmann, then it's P. carolina that's unique, not P. exclamans. Furthermore, that's a very awkward sentence. Say "unique among Polistes in occupying..." Makes the same point and doesn't sound nearly as clunky.

• Thank you for catching this error. I have removed all references to this paper with the exception of two instances where the statements apply to all members of Polistes. Jeremy.winkler ( talk) 06:03, 10 December 2012 (UTC) reply

• Sepa, Queller & Strassmann, aforementioned, cite "Reeve HK, 1991. Polistes. In: The social biology of wasps (Ross KG, Matthews RW, eds). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press; 99-148." This reference looks like it's got information about the genus in general which could be used to help describe P. exclamans. You may want to try to get hold of it.

• I have skimmed the Polistes and from the first read it appears to mainly have behavioral information which I have found in other sources. I intend to read this chapter in more detail to determine whether it discusses topics that I haven't read about. Jeremy.winkler ( talk) 06:03, 10 December 2012 (UTC) reply

• Make sure your references are in order; I fixed a number of them where the same reference had been defined in full several times over. You might consider using Shortened footnotes. To use them, you create both a "References" section (containing {{reflist}}) and below it, a "Bibliography" section. In the "Bibliography" section, you put all your references in order: it's a long list of {{cite journal ...}}, {{cite book...}}, or {{citation...}}, and if you're using one of the first two, make sure to add the "ref=harv" parameter. Once you've done that, you can just write {{sfn|West|1968|p=5}}, and it'll generate a citation that says "West, 1968, p. 5" in the references section; it will automatically link to whatever line in your bibliography was authored by West in 1968. THIS IS COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO CHANGE THIS TO BE A GA. I only mention it because I've found it very convenient in writing biology articles, where most sources have a clear author and year of publication. It certainly avoids the duplicate references problem. You do have to split up the authors to make it work: instead of "author = Seuss, Dr. & Melville, Herman" you have to specify "first1=Dr. | last1=Seuss | first2=Herman | last2=Melville" and so forth.
• You should be consistent in how you list authors: last name only? last name and initials? first and last names?

• This has been fixed. Jeremy.winkler ( talk) 06:03, 10 December 2012 (UTC) reply

• I think I've fixed them all, but whenever you have a range of numbers, they should be separated by an en-dash, not a hyphen. Some had one, some didn't. See WP:MOSDASH.
• You have "doi" in all your references, but nothing following it. DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier. If you look around in the bibliographic information in that Seppa et al. paper, you'll see "doi: 10.1093/beheco/13.4.531". In the {{citation}}. instead of just "doi", put "doi=10.1093/beheco/13.4.531". That will create a formatted link in your References section to that paper at its publisher's website. If you want to look up the DOI for a paper, use this tool.

• I added the DOIs for most of the articles; however, there were 3 articles that I couldn't find DOIs for. What is the protocol for this? Jeremy.winkler ( talk) 06:03, 10 December 2012 (UTC) reply

• The "Morphology" section is misleading. Seeing that section heading, I expect to see a description of the wasp's morphology: shape of thorax, abdomen, coloration, whatever else constitutes distinctive characteristics for hymenoptera, and ideally some explanation of how one distinguishes it from similar species. That kind of morphological description doesn't exist anywhere in the article as it stands, and I think it's key for a good article about a particular species.

• I have struggled to find specific morphology on P. exclamans. I found some using McIlveen & Hamman. I will attempt to add more to this section ASAP. Jeremy.winkler ( talk) 06:03, 10 December 2012 (UTC) reply

That's as far as I've gotten so far; more later. Choess ( talk) 03:40, 30 November 2012 (UTC) reply

Continuing:

• McIlveen & Hamman might be helpful in developing a morphological description.
• When you abbreviate a genus name (e.g., P.), write " " instead of a space before the specific epithet. This will create a nonbreaking space, so that the genus abbreviation and the specific epithet will not be separated by page breaks if someone changes font size.
• The conclusions of Strassmann, 1980, seem to be somewhat overstated. Workers can take over egg laying when the queen dies before July, but it's not clear that they do so "at any time".
• "Begs the question" does not mean what you think it does; it means to assume a particular answer to a question which, in fact, has yet to be resolved. Find another way of stating it.
• Link the sugars fructose etc.
• Explain the significance of these sugars: they are believed to be the cryoprotectants. Don't just say they have "different" levels; which was higher and which lower, and what effect would that have on their survival?
• I can't view the full text of Bohm, 1972, but it appears to be about P. metricus. Are these conclusions applicable to all of Polistes?

• To my best understanding, it seemed that the conclusions that I referenced were about Polistes as a genus and not specifically P. metricus. Jeremy.winkler ( talk) 06:03, 10 December 2012 (UTC) reply

• If these conclusions remain applicable, explain what "day chambers" are. Link juvenile hormone.

I'm going to put the review on hold for now, because there's a lot to plow through. My suggestions:

1. Go back through the sources and check to make sure that all of them are applicable to genus Polistes in general or to P. exclamans in particular. Remove information that is really about another Polistes species. (see point 2 of the Good article criteria)
2. Make sure the article provides a well-rounded description of P. exclamans. The lack of overall description has been noted above. See the note at Wikipedia:WikiProject Insects#Article contents to get an idea of what would be good to see in a well-balanced insect article. (see point 3 of the criteria)
3. Start rewriting the lead section once the content of the rest of the article has been straightened out.

If you can fix that (and it's a hefty chunk of work), I'd be happy to come back and continue to review in detail. Choess ( talk) 02:01, 1 December 2012 (UTC) reply

Hi, Choess. Thank you very much for all of your comments/suggestions! Jeremy.winkler has been working on this article most significantly for our class mentioned above, and together we would like to improve it as much as we can. We will start chipping away at the suggestions you have very soon and let you know when we've made significant headway. Thanks again! Nsavalia23 ( talk) 21:08, 2 December 2012 (UTC) reply

Great, thanks! I've watchlisted this page, so I'll see. I do appreciate the work all of you have done digesting this technical information; we can always use people willing to do that. Making an article about a scientific topic, even a single animal, well-rounded and balanced is surprisingly difficult; it's comparable to writing a literature review, IMO. So don't feel abashed because of the volume of comments above. Choess ( talk) 23:42, 2 December 2012 (UTC) reply

These are the edits that have been made so far. I have double checked that all of my conclusions are based on P. exclamans or at least to Polistes. I have asked around for some additional sources on morphology and I expect to hear back shortly. Thank you for your help. Jeremy.winkler ( talk) 06:03, 10 December 2012 (UTC) reply

Comment: Choess, there hasn't been an edit by Jeremy.winkler on Wikipedia since December 10, well over three weeks ago. It may well be time to close this. There was a trio of edits by another editor on December 19, so you may want to take a look on the off-chance that they've addressed all the issues you raised. BlueMoonset ( talk) 00:12, 4 January 2013 (UTC) reply

He now seems to have addressed most things on Jan. 9 if this could be re-looked at. Wizardman 23:52, 13 January 2013 (UTC) reply

Actually, I found one further issue. This doesn't strike me as a reliable source; it should be replaced. Wizardman 18:54, 20 January 2013 (UTC) reply

Fixed myself, passing. Wizardman 17:40, 21 January 2013 (UTC) reply

Overall a really good article! I really enjoyed it all and I learned a lot. You have a great variety of sections. I mostly just made a few minor changes throughout the article, and added some links. However, I have a couple of further suggestions. Your second to last sentence in the overview section seems a little out of place. I would have a look at this to see if any changes can be made. Make sure you are italicizing subgenera as well as genera and species names. I do not think that you need to list the states in which it is found in both the ‘description’ and ‘distribution’ sections, and I think it might be more logical to just leave it in the ‘distribution’ section. Additionally, your ‘distribution’ section is a tad repetitive, so it might be nice to make it more concise.

In the later part of your article, I would take a look at your ‘gerontocracy’ section, it is a little bit confusing. Overall, I would take a careful look at your citations. I think there are some sentences that are lacking proper reference. For example, you directly quote an article in your ‘range extension’ section, however, you do not put the reference. Finally, I would watch the use of the semicolon. While it is a useful punctuation mark, I found myself getting confused. Again, overall a really strong article. You have a lot of information that gives a really great picture of your species. Kirinne ( talk) 04:15, 24 October 2014 (UTC)Kirinne reply

Thoroughly excellent article but if I had to give any criticism, it would be to the Parasitoids section. Though it does go into detail about how these parasitoids attack the nest and gives example species, I think the next step would be to explain how P. exclamans actually reacts to this time of parasitism. Are all attacks by these parasitoids successful? If not, what does P. exclamans do in order to inhibit this activity? If they are, what is the mechanism for circumenventing any of the colony defense behaviors of P. exclamans? Regardless, congratulations on a well-done article!

Spencer Tong ( talk)

The main paragraph states Due to solitary nest founding by queens, P. exclamans has extended its range in the past few decades..., but I find that their nests are founded consistently by a queen and a sister foundresses. Unless I am terribly mistaken in identification over the past 12 years. Central New Mexico. I am also confused by the very premise of the statement, as solitary nest founding would make the species more vulnerable to failure and slower to propagate. - 97.123.161.66 ( talk) 10:39, 18 May 2018 (UTC) reply

This article was the subject of an educational assignment at Washington University supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2012 Fall term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}} by PrimeBOT ( talk) on 16:57, 2 January 2023 (UTC) reply