Talk:Miniopterus brachytragos

Miniopterus brachytragos 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
August 6, 2010	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on July 24, 2010.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that recent molecular and morphological research has led to the identification of five species within the Malagasy bat species Miniopterus manavi—M. aelleni, M. brachytragos, M. griveaudi, M. mahafaliensis, and M. manavi itself?

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GA Review

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

Reviewer: Ealdgyth - Talk 13:31, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be reviewing this article shortly. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:31, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. There were a few things that recently came up in the review for M. aelleni (Talk:Miniopterus aelleni/GA1) that also need fixing here, but I haven't done that yet. Ucucha 13:34, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for criteria)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS):
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

Specific concerns

Lead:
- "Up to four species of this complex..." errr... what does complex mean here? Better explain for non-biologists.
  - Substituded "group", which works just as well.
Taxonomy:
- What does "conspecifics" mean in the second paragraph? No link so I'm clueless.
  - Removed. It's a very useful word; the trouble is that non-biologists don't understand it.
Description:
- uropatagium - you've redlinked it, but a quickie explanation would be good here.
  - It was explained in the lead, but not here; I doubled the gloss.
- Wouldn't it be "total length WAS.." and similarliy throughout this section?
  - Perhaps; I'm not sure. However, these specimens are in a museum (probably in Chicago) and if you measure them again, you'll (hopefully) get the same results, so the present tense is justifiable.
    - It just sounds weird, to me. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:27, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - OK; I changed it. Ucucha 15:03, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
General:
- What do they eat? Litters? How many babies? Gestation? All that fun and exciting life stuff?
  - Nothing definitive is known, unfortunately. There have been some studies of Miniopterus manavi before M. brachytragos and others were recognized as distinct, but it is impossible to tell which data refer to which species—for example, we know what "Miniopterus manavi" at Namoroka eat (mostly hymenopteran insects), but these data could refer to any or all of four different species. I will cover all that in an overview article on Malagasy Miniopterus, but I don't think it would be justified to dig up these studies and say that those data may refer to M. brachytragos, which is the best we could do. Ucucha 14:13, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - Surely we can say that they eat insects or fruit or both, even if we don't give total specifics. It just seems odd to not have ANY of this biological information in an article on a species. Frankly, non-sepcialists are going to be most interested in this stuff, not the length/etc of the animal. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:27, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - True enough, but none of that information is unambiguously known for this animal. However, I added a sentence with a summary of general Miniopterus biology. Ucucha 15:03, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've put the article on hold for seven days to allow folks to address the issues I've brought up. Feel free to contact me on my talk page, or here with any concerns, and let me know one of those places when the issues have been addressed. If I may suggest that you strike out, check mark, or otherwise mark the items I've detailed, that will make it possible for me to see what's been addressed, and you can keep track of what's been done and what still needs to be worked on. Go ahead and apply those changes from the other GAN also... Ealdgyth - Talk 13:42, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've replied to all the points above. One more thing: you linked Old World, but I'm not too sure about that, since it seems a too common term for a link. On the other hand, Miniopterus occurs in southern Eurasia, Africa, and Australia, and inclusion of Australia in the "Old World" is apparently not universal (cf. our articles on Old World and New World). I'm thinking it might be better to just say "Africa, Eurasia, and Australia". Ucucha 14:13, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That'd be a good compromise. Not everyone, I'm sorry to say, knows what Old World means. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:25, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Ucucha 15:03, 6 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]