Talk:Microhodotermes viator

Microhodotermes viator was nominated as a Natural sciences good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (August 16, 2024, reviewed version). There are suggestions on the review page for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

Insects Low‑importance

	Insects portal 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
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Africa: Namibia / South Africa Low‑importance

	Africa portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Africa, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Africa 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.AfricaWikipedia:WikiProject AfricaTemplate:WikiProject AfricaAfrica articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Namibia.
	South Africa portal This article is supported by WikiProject South Africa.

The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:

W.R.J. Dean, Unpredictable foraging behaviour in Microhodotermes viator (Isoptera: Hodotermitidae): an antipredator tactic? Journal of African Zoology (1993)
J.M. Moore, M.D. Picker Heuweltjies (earth-mounds) in the Clanwilliam district, Cape Province, South Africa Oecologia, 87 (1991), pp. 424-432 (carbon dating; 4,000 year-old nest)
Noirot, C., 1995. The gut of termites (Isoptera). Comparative anatomy, systematics, phylogeny. 1. Lower termites. Annals de la Societé Entomologique de France 31, 197–226. (figured gut)
Coaton, W.G.H. 1981. Fossilised nests of Hodotermitidae (Isoptera) from the Clanwilliam district, Cape province. Journal of the Entomological Society of Southern Africa 44 (2): 79–81. (describes nest and suggests ancestor built fossilized mounds)
Kirby, Harold. “Flagellate and Host Relationships of Trichomonad Flagellates.” The Journal of Parasitology, vol. 33, no. 3, 1947, pp. 214–28. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3273552. Accessed 5 July 2024. (Describes protozoan amoeba Gigantomonas herculea as parasitizing M. viator)
Coaton, W.G.H. 1958. The hodotermitid harvester termites of South Africa. Science Bulletin Department of Agriculture Union of South Africa (Entomology Series) (43) 375: iv + 1–112. (synonymy; types; ecology; biology; nest; termitophiles; distribution. Namibia; South Africa.)
Yamin, M.A. 1979. Flagellates of the orders Trichomonadida Kirby, oxymonadida Grassé, and Hypermastigida Grassi and Foà reported from lower termites (Isoptera families Mastotermitidae, Kalotermitidae, Hodotermitidae, Termopsidae, Rhinotermitidae, and Serritermitidae) and from the wood-feeding roach Cryptocercus (Dictyoptera: Cryptocercidae). Sociobiology 4 (1): 1–120. (Describes flagellate protozoan relationship)
Johnson, R.A., and T.G. Wood. 1980. Termites of the arid zones of Africa and the Arabian peninsula. Sociobiology 5 (3): 279–293.
Uys, V.[M.. 2002. A guide to the termite genera of southern Africa. pretoria: ARC-plant protection Research Institute Handbook No. 15, 116 pp.] (figs. 52–57 show soldier, nest, and map)
Austin, J.W., A.L. Szalanski, and B.J. Cabrera. 2004a. phylogenetic analysis of the subterranean termite family Rhinotermitidae (Isoptera) by using the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase II gene. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 97 (3): 548–555. (Phylogenic tree and pairwise distances)
Ohkuma et. al. 2004. Molecular phylogeny of Asian termites (Isoptera) of the families Termitidae and Rhinotermitidae based on mitochondrial CoII sequences. Molecular phylogenetics and Evolution 31: 701–710. (phylogeny)
Vohland, K., and J. Deckert. 2005. Termites (Isoptera) along a north-south transect in Namibia and South Africa. Entomologische Zeitschrift 115 (3): 109–115. (ecology; feeding groups; distribution. South Africa)
Engel, M.S., D.A. Grimaldi, and K. Krishna. 2009. Termites (Isoptera): their phylogeny, classification, and rise to ecological dominance. American Museum Novitates 3650: 1–27. (character-state coding, phylogeny)
BDHL results

A fact from Microhodotermes viator appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 July 2024 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that scientists tested the age of an African termite's inhabited mound—and found it to be 34,000 years old?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2024/July. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Microhodotermes viator.

Wikipedia

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Hey man im josh talk 17:18, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(

Comment or view
Article history

)

... that scientists tested the age of an African termite's inhabited mound—and found it to be 34,000 years old?

Source: https://news.mongabay.com/2024/06/34000-year-old-termite-mounds-in-south-africa-are-still-being-used/

Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Côte d'Ivoire–Ghana Cocoa Initiative

Created by Zanahary (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 11 past nominations.

꧁Zanahary꧂ 12:50, 5 July 2024 (UTC).[reply]

Will review this. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:29, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Looks good. ~~Pending QPQ.~~ BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:44, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Did the QPQ! Sorry for the wait BeanieFan11 ꧁Zanahary꧂ 04:57, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:25, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

Unsuccessful. Fritzmann (message me) 20:54, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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

Nominator: Zanahary (talk · contribs) 05:50, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Fritzmann2002 (talk · contribs) 02:14, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I will begin the review of this article shortly. Fritzmann (message me) 02:14, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Prose

For the names in the lead, I recommend only putting the most commonly attested common name at the start of the article. It should also probably have an etymology section that discusses both the Latin name and other common names in more detail. That will also remove those references from the lead and put them in the body. You can also discuss the Afrikaans (?) names for it separately than the English names.
The lead is not quite long enough. It should address all aspects of the article, missing now are the description, behavior, and symbiosis sections.
I notice there is no taxonomic history section. Typically for specific taxa, there is at least a paragraph on the synonyms and taxonomic history of the species. Because there are several synonyms on the taxobox, this seems like it should be rather feasible. The first sentence of the description sentence could be split into this taxo history section.
Wherever non-English text is used, the Lang template needs to be used for accessibility
Link or explain "tarsi", "tibiae", and "femora"
Perhaps discussions of color could be their own paragraph in the description section? I also wonder why these different authors describe the species as being slightly different colors; is that discussed at all by any chance?
A brief mention of the roles of workers, soldiers, and alates is warranted. I also see you call the alates the reproductive caste in the infobox image caption, which may be a helpful descriptor in the text.
Is it found particularly on the west coast of Namibia, or particularly on the west coast of Namibia and South Africa?
Throughout the article, "is" and "are" are used interchangeably to refer to the species. For example: "Microhodotermes viator is found in..." vs "Microhodotermes viator are eusocial insects...". I typically try to stick with the singular, as it makes grammar easier to reconcile.
Do the termites directly consume and digest the foraged plant material? That is the impression I got from the sentence on cellulose but I wanted to make sure
Is there any material on their mating behavior or life cycle? That seems to be the only part of the species that was noticeably not covered
"The distribution of heuweltjies represents roughly 49% of the distribution of M. viator" I'm not sure what this means; the use of "distribution" may be causing some confusion here
"zoogenic hypothesis" is there a link for this?
Is there a link for burrowing bees? Also, what kind of mole-rats, there are several relatively unrelated species that have that common name
That bit about the ancient carbon reservoirs is really interesting, and would make a solid DYK
I think that for the symbiosis and parasites section, the lists of associated species could be put into footnotes, and just the family/common names could be used. That would improve readability a lot, and I don't think most people will need to know the individual species anyways. For example, it could simply be: "Rove beetles and clown beetles live in M. viator nests, as do insects of the order Zygentoma. If that is done, I think the section could be condensed down to not need subsections.
Is Psammotermes allocerus a predator or a mutualist?

References

Citation date style needs to be standardized, I recommend # Month 20xx
I notice there are at least a handful of references on the talk page listed as useful for expansion of the article that have not yet been incorporated – at least not that I could see. Is there a reason for this, and does leaving out these references still allow the article to have broad coverage of the species in your opinion?
Have the two hidden notes in the symbiosis and parasites section been addressed? If so can they be removed?

Images

Images could use alternative text for accessibility

On the whole, the article is pretty close to GA. The lead needs a bit of expansion, a few new minor sections might be warranted, and a few prose nitpicks should be addressed. I have not conducted an image license review or source spotcheck yet, but wanted to leave these comments so you can start working on them while I do those last items. Fritzmann (message me) 17:46, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all these notes! I'm currently in the process of moving house, but I'll work on the article as soon as I can. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 00:17, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Status query

Fritzmann, Zanahary, where does this review stand? Zanahary has been active lately, but has only made two minor edits to the article on 19 July, three-and-a-half weeks ago; Fritzmann has not yet done the image license review or source spotcheck in the five weeks since the review was posted. Any chance that this can get moving again in the near future? Thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:19, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@BlueMoonset: I have been away from a laptop the past few weeks but haven't seen any progress towards the listed feedback. As it stands the article is not quite ready for GA (broadness and prose need some work), and if those are not going to be addressed I don't see a need to do the image or source checks. I am going to close the nomination, but Zanahary if you have time in the future and want to re-nominate please give me a ping and I am happy to pick up the review again. Fritzmann (message me) 20:54, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.