Talk:Plant and fungus communication via mycorrhizal networks

Proposal to change 'infochemical' to 'semiochemical' and link to semiochemical page

Infochemical and semiochemical sometimes treated as synonyms. Some authors exclude toxins from the infochemical category which appear to be included here. Ethan Bass (talk) 13:36, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to merge with Plant Communication

I think this article could perhaps be merged with the article on Plant Communication which has a section on communication through mycorrhizal networks. Ethan Bass (talk) 13:29, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

First sentence

The first sentence is awkward, as it suffers from a common confusion known as the use–mention distinction, and also because of a somewhat forced wording due to an apparent attempt to repeat the entire title in the first sentence so it can be bolded. See WP:REFERS, Wikipedia:Superfluous bolding explained and MOS:TITLEABSENTBOLD for some ideas on how to deal with these issues. In addition, it could use some context; MOS:FIRST says: the first sentence should give a concise definition: where possible, one that puts the article in context for the nonspecialist. To me, the first sentence is crying out for "is a type of [[plant communication]] that..." to provide that context. Some of the more technical words could be moved out of the first sentence to later in the paragraph and explained or linked as necessary. See MOS:JARGON. Pinging @Lichenhunter and Shalor (Wiki Ed):. Mathglot (talk) 06:04, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree and will work on that. It is a tough subject to sum up with little jargon Lichenhunter (talk) 15:49, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@Lichenhunter: There's no need to remove technical terms. You can keep them and explain them inline, perhaps with a quotation from a non-academic publication. Articles written by science writers for general publications targeting the non-scientist are a great source for finding good ideas about how to convey complex topics in science to a general readership. You can get lots of ideas, by searching for "wood wide web", for example. This search returns results from The New Yorker, Nova, Atlantic, Nova, BBC, PBS, and others, all of which have ideas of how to approach this. I'm sure one could come up with a first sentence which would be perfectly clear to the average high school student, without dumping the accurate terms where needed. I've got something in mind, but you know way more than I do about the topic, and I'd like to see what you come up with.

P.S., I added an indent for you in your last comment above. Please read WP:THREAD. Mathglot (talk) 00:35, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Bottom matter

Article needs a See also section, and possibly a External links or Further reading section. Consider adding portal(s) as well. Mathglot (talk) 06:18, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Could you provide some concrete suggestions. I think that a See also section is important, but I am just not sure what to put in it. There is a ton of pertinent information in the references, but there are certainly more references I could have used. Should I just elevate some of the more focused reviews. Also, Suzanne Simard is highly referenced because she has done so much work on this topic. I was thinking I should reference her in some way? Lichenhunter (talk) 15:54, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

@Lichenhunter: See also is not for additional citations; see WP:SEEALSO. You are probably thinking of Further reading, but it doesn’t need that section. As for concrete suggestions, please see the See also sections in related articles; you can follow links at Plant communication and see what they have in their See alsos and see if any of them make sense here. You could add Suzanne Simard, so long as she is not already linked in the article. Other possibilities might be Source–sink dynamics, Glomeromycetes, Myco-heterotrophy, and Mixotrophy but you should find your own, and I’m not familiar enough with the field to know if these would be good candidates.

Also, please see WP:THREAD about proper style on Talk pages, and templates {{reply}} and {{ping}} for notifying other discussion participants. Mathglot (talk) 04:52, 18 December 2018 (UTC)