Talk:Pack rat

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   I think that the article was satisfactory overall in explaining the usage of the proxy in understanding past climate change.  It explains how the   scientists use the remains of the animals that were found in the midden in order to get a sense of the climate during the time. By using the "Bergmann's rule" they can determine what region the animal came from because it is related to the air in the atmosphere. However the article never states a weakness of the proxy method, the article just states that they are reliable in determining the "time capsule of natural life". It also fails to show specific evidence of data analyses of recent practical uses.
   The peer reviewed articles listed are definitely current with a majority being in the past 4 years, and one of the articles in particular (Effects of global warming on wood rat (Neotoma cinerea) body size during the last deglaciation) does a very thorough job of explaining how the proxy is used to determine climate change. However, the two articles that I discovered were not listed as a reference or source. The first peer-reviewed article was titled "Modeling Climate Limits of Plants Found in Sonoran Desert Packrat Middens". This was published by Samantha Arundel in 2002. My second peer-reviewed article was titled "Packrat Middens and Climate Change", and the author was George L. Jacobson.  
   One recommendations is to provide evidence of recent usage of the proxy. Another recommendation is to elaborate more on the strengths and weaknesses of the proxy and ff the developments when it was first used until now. SagulSasu21 (talk) 22:07, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Untitled

"Historically, houses in or near ghost towns such as Crestone, Colorado were typically infested with pack rats. In the days before television, this provided a measure of entertainment to the sensation-starved residents." is it just me, or does that sound slightly random? 86.84.54.179 20:55, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Merger Tag

• Merge - Articles should be merged, the midden does not require it's own article. Headphonos 13:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

As the guy who started packrat midden, I don't mind. - BanyanTree 14:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that this article should also be part of the climate change article.

I agree that Pack Rat and midden should be merged, and I wouldnt mind if human pack rat were combined also. Macroqueen 17:16, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

• Definite Merge Yes, there's no reason the midden should be separate from the animal itself. It's just a behavior of the animal.

Name

Isn't "woodrat" a more common name for Neotoma? Ucucha 19:26, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

'More common,' according to whom? According to search engines and the internet? No, by a factor of several thousandfold. According to our personal experiences? No, they don't matter. According to text books? No, scholar.google.com yields more hits for packrat v woodrat (with qualifying presence of the term neotoma within six words). So no, I'm afraid woodrat isn't a more common name, although thank you for teaching me a name for packrat I had never heard of before. Sadly it's not often I learn new things anymore so I appreciate it. BaSH PR0MPT (talk) 09:42, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Packrat vs. Pack Rat

The intro says that the official name is "Packrat" even though "Pack rat" is commonly used. Shouldn't the article's title take on the official spelling? At least, I think that's what's commonly done on most articles. However, I don't know for sure so I thought I'd check here first. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Golmschenk (talk • contribs) 02:54, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

yes, woodrat is the common term used for rodents in the genus Neotoma; packrat (one word) is an alternative. It tends to be used in non-scientific contexts. The American Society of Mammalogists produces species accounts that provide all kinds of information on mammals of the world. Someone needs to go into the ones written for woodrats and add it in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.24.145.127 (talk) 21:03, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Role in paleontology, etc.

It may be worth noting that we owe pack rats for many paleolithic finds of European cave lions, cave bears, and other bones that have been hoarded - significant evidence suggests that most 'caves full of bones' were ex post facto collections made by pack rats collecting bright objects, including thousands of bones of dead animals. I have zero knowledge of these beasties besides their role in delivering to us some pretty amazing scientific finds through their indefatigable foraging for oddities. BaSH PR0MPT (talk) 09:38, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

References for Pack Rat Midden needs updated

The reference in this article (#7) is no longer active and should be replaced with a peer-reviewed source if possible. The subtopic about Pack Rat Midden should also contain more sources if possible as it only had one before (which doesn't work anymore) to be a more credible source.

Jtra1n (talk) 23:33, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Source Seven is Broken and a General Critique

The link for source seven is broken. This is very troubling considering that the entire subsection of "Midden" is dependent on this source, additionally half of the text for the "Climate Change Indicators" section depends on this single source. All of the text from "A pack rat midden is a debris pile constructed by a woodrat. A midden may preserve the materials incorporated into it for up to 50,000 years, thus may be analyzed to reconstruct their original environment, and comparisons between middens allow a record of vegetative and climate change to be built. Examinations and comparisons of pack rat middens have largely supplanted pollen records as a method of study in the regions where they are available.[7] Active pack rat midden in northern Nevada In the absence of rock crevices or caves, the dens are often built under trees or bushes. The pack rats will also use plant fragments, animal dung, and small rocks in building the den. The vast majority of the materials will be from a radius of several dozen yards of the nest. Woodrats often urinate on the debris piles; sugar and other substances in the urine crystallize as it dries out, creating a material known as amberat, which under some conditions can cement the midden together. The resilience of the middens is aided by three factors. The crystallized urine dramatically slows the decay of the materials in the midden; the dry climate of the American Southwest further slows the decay; and middens protected from the elements under rock overhangs or in caves survive longer. Climate change indicators Zoologists examine the remains of animals in middens to get a sense of the fauna in the neighborhood of the midden, while paleobotanists can reconstruct the vegetation that grew nearby. Middens are considered reliable "time capsules" of natural life, centuries and millennia after they occurred. Woodrat middens are composed of many things, including plants macrofossils and fecal pellets. Bushy-tailed woodrat on midden Paleo-ecologists have used a variety of techniques to analyze the plant and animal material in pack rat middens describe paleo-communities and infer paleo-climate. For example, the plant species present in middens, and the carbon isotope ratios on material in middens have been widely studied.[7]" all depends on source 7 and is the vast majority of the article that pertains to climate.

Most of the other sources for this article are recent, and reference 8 is very credible, however there are very little workable references for the sections related to climate. It also never mentions how the isotopes in Woodrat pellets can be used for Paleoclimatology. It would be useful to add more information on the methods that data is recorded from the plant and animal remains.

This article generally does a decent job at explaining how middens are used in Paleoclimatology. However, there is little information on how middens are limited in the way that one can measure data about past climate. There is no comment on the limitations of this method nor are there any quantitative comments on its accuracy. Additionally, there are no specific examples of situations in which middens were used for Paleoclimatology. One peer review article linked here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033589415000745 gives a specific instance in California where middens were used for research to understand the past climate of the Mojave desert. Here is another peer reviewed article that overviews how middens are used in Paleoclimatology is this peer reviewed article on the climate of Colorado: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jbi.12431/full . --Rebecca.salamacha (talk) 03:03, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Article evaluation

1. Overall, the article decently explains how middens are used as a proxy measure to help scientists understand past climates. There is very little data analysis, however the editor clearly explains the correlation between fecal pellet size, pack rat size, and the climate conditions at a given time. The article also doesn’t provide much detail on the assumptions of using middens as a proxy measure. The article does indirectly address the strengths of the proxy in that midden records have replaced pollen records in the area because it provides an analysis of earlier and better preserved natural materials. However, I don’t recall the article addressing the weaknesses of using middens as proxies.

2. The peer-reviewed articles listed are appropriate, however, one of the cited links is broken. Two peer-reviewed articles on pack rats/middens are as followed: a. http://www.pmtk9.com/images/packrat.pdf b. http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1894/0038-4909%282005%29050%5B0209%3APMALHE%5D2.0.CO%3B2?journalCode=swna Neither one of these articles was listed on the Wikipedia article.

3. One improvement for the article would be to include more relevant (and retraceable) citations so that readers can not only fact-check, but can also utilize those references to learn more information if desired. Another improvement would be to include additional details on the topic in it’s entirety, including more information on the types of climate-related information that can be gathered from pack rats and/or middens. Kayla0013 (talk) 17:28, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Article Critique

Overall, this article does provide necessary information that leads to the understanding of the role studying pack rats and middens plays while determining place climatic characteristics, however, I noticed a few aspects the article lacks regarding the general aspects of paleoclimatology. First, the article does not explain what exactly paleoclimatology is or why it matters. Furthermore, it does not differentiate or identify strengths or weaknesses within the proxy method or use any type of data analysis to explain the nature of paleoclimatology or further present the argument. The article does, however, explain some assumptions that are made when using pack rats and middens to identify climate changes and events by explaining Bergmann's Rule and how this rule allows scientists to use the size of rat pellets found within middens to establish relative temperatures throughout time. In a general sense, I think the article does a good job at introducing the concept, but could be reworded in such a way to make it a bit easier to follow, and some additions about paleoclimatology (or maybe a link to the paleoclimatology page) to provide all of the information necessary for a full understanding. I also think that the photos of pack rats add to the physical aesthetics of the page, but aren't really relevant to the paleoclimatology argument. I think charts of data retrieved using this proxy method would make a better addition to the page than the existing photos. The sources are relatively up to date (albeit one from 1995) and trustworthy, except for source 7, whose page no longer exists. This peer reviewed article uses proxies to prove its argument, which could provide some useful information about proxies in general that could serve as good additions to the Pack rat article: http://www.pnas.org/content/103/4/837.short This peer reviewed article explains how pack rat middens lead to the "reconstruction of past desert vegetation along the Colorado River", which presents a particular use for packrat proxies, making the article more interesting and informative: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003101829090120V Neither of these articles were used for the pack rat article. Kadeynelson (talk) 02:00, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Article Evaluation

1.The article clearly explains how middens are used as a proxy measure. It explains that middens can reveal information about the past climate from the plant species found within the middens and the carbon isotope ratio of the material. The article does not however describe data analysis or assumptions in detail. The article mentions that middens have surpassed pollen records as a proxy, but it doesn’t talk about the cons or downsides to using middens as a record other than their implied scarcity.

2.Link #7 gives a 404 error, but otherwise the articles are appropriate and current. Two peer reviewed articles discussing pack rat mittens as proxys are linked: http://people.uncw.edu/emslies/documents/Emslieetal.2015pinonpalaeohistoryinColorado.pdf http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2012.02704.x/abstract These are not used in the article.

3.An improvement that can be made would be to clean up the citations that link to 404’d pages. The article could also talk more about the feasibility of mittens as a proxy method and provide more examples of mittens being used in the field of paleoclimatology. Sea eh ell (talk) 05:55, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

General critiques

Under the midden section of the article, it would be beneficial to discuss some strengths and weaknesses of the use of middens as proxy data. I'm sure the referenced articles for this section are up to date but they were just hard to find. Maybe adding some articles that would be easier to validate as "peer-reviewed" would be helpful and would also add more in depth facts about data analysis used in the middens. The assumptions are great, adding more might help readers understand what scientists are trying to get from all the data analysis discussed in the article.

Two peer reviewed articles, I found to be beneficial/related are: "Influence of tropical easterlies in southern Africa's winter rainfall zone during the Holocene" (Chase, Lim, Chevalier, Boom, Carr, Meadows, and Reimer 2015) and "Modeling climate limits of plants found in Sonoran Desert packrat middens" (Arundel 2002)

BritStewart (talk) 08:05, 23 February 2017 (UTC)