Talk:Lasioglossum malachurum

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Liz.yucknut.

Comments and Editing

Overall, the Lasioglossum malachurum entry is well organized and provides insightful information about this species. The writing is condensed and very accessible ensuring that the complex behaviors discussed can be understood by a wide audience. I am especially impressed by the “Colony Cycle” section which included a comprehensive and detailed time scale about colony formation. When editing this paper there were a few places in which there needed to be additions of linked words to enhance the reader's understanding. In the "Dominance hierarchies" section, I included a link for the word gynes. Without a link or even an explanation for gynes there was gap in the readers understanding of the dominance hierarchies as the future queen caste plays a distinctive role within a nest. Within the "Mating behaviors" section, I linked lek mating. This is an important concept that needed to be linked because it is very difficult to understand and connect the other facts included without having a basic understanding of lek mating. Because I thought this concept for so essential I also added sentence giving the basic definition provided by the paper Hotshots, Hotspots, and Female Preference in the Organization of Lek Mating Systems by Bruce M. Beehler and Mercedes S. Foster. Within the "Aggression" section, I linked the word antagonistic behavior because having a linked page could be helpful for readers who are having trouble understanding this section. Lastly I made an organizational change by deleting part of the information included in the “Taxonomy and Phylogeny” section and including it within the “Distribution and Habitat” section. I made this change because the information was regarding behavior differences due to varying environments and I believed that information would make more sense within another section. Helenaxeros (talk) 21:17, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your contributions to the L. malachurum page! I think your changes to the organization and clarifying sentences were very helpful. Unfortunately, according to the Wikipedia manual of style, only the first instance of a word in an article should be linked, so I reverted a few of the linked words that you added. Thanks again for your contribution! Kulshrestha51 (talk) 21:01, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

This article was well written, and very broad in its coverage. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about this species. For instance, I thought the Mating Behavior section was very interesting. The lek mating system is very complex, and it's intriguing to learn about a bee species adopting it. There were a couple sentence revisions I made in the general overview, Taxonomy, and Distribution sections. In the general overview, the adjective "shining" was used. I changed it to "shiny", but am still unsure which adjective was meant to be used. I also changed "blackish" and "whitish" to more appropriate adjectives. In the Distribution section, I linked chimes. It's a pretty simple definition, but I have never heard of it and figured there is probably someone else out there who could use the definition. Overall, you're off to a great start!Liz.yucknut (talk) 12:08, 29 September 2015 (UTC)