Talk:Ant mimicry/Archive 1

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 September 2018 and 28 November 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Eab45. Peer reviewers: RosieLillian, Amlftwix.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:24, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

WPAnts?

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a WikiProject Ants? :) hm, maybe later, WP is still young. --Sarefo 01:52, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

What about a WikiProject Hymenoptera first? Richard001 23:21, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Ambiguous

Is there any ambiguity in the title? The article is about mimicry of ants, but could it not also be assumed that it could be about mimicry by ants? Perhaps it should be moved to mimicry of ants? Or am I just being too fussy? Richard001 00:18, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

A google scholar search shows 78 hits for ant mimicry (often with a hyphen, although the search engine doesn't seem to care about the hyphen), and 44 hits for mimicry of ants. So neither of those terms seems wrong to me (wikipedia should generally adopt the terminology of the field which it describes). If mimicry by ants is a rare or nonexistent phenomenon, this could be a non-issue in practice. Summary: no strong opinion one way or the other, and I suspect you've been reading a lot more about mimicry than me lately. Kingdon 22:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, if there is no mimicry by ants, it's not really a problem. I'd be surprised if there wasn't some, although I haven't done a lot of reading on ants. The comparison with weed mimicry, which is mimicry by weeds, shows that there can be ambiguity though. Richard001 23:24, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Mimicry in animals/invertebrates

I'm thinking of some more taxonomic mimicry articles. Though the possibilities are endless, some ideas I'm entertaining are mimicry in plants and mimicry in vertebrates, and perhaps a mimicry in invertebrates would close the remaining gap (the rest being covered in plants, e.g. fungi). Mimicry in insects is another possibility, but leaves the other taxa orphaned. Sub-articles on the more common cases, such as lepidoptera, could also be pursued. Richard001 09:41, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Fungi are not plants. So either separate articles, or mimicry in plants and fungi. Given the differences (e.g. the role of pollination), separate articles, I suppose. Kingdon 00:32, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

If there were enough cases of mimicry in fungi it could go in a separate article, but otherwise it would be better just to lump it in with plants. The cases are quite similar, e.g. mushrooms and flowers both attracting insects to disperse pollen/spores. Other microbes have traditionally been treated along with plants in botany too. There are other organisms in the so called 'protists' that aren't plants either, but it could get rather difficult titling the article 'mimicry in plants, fungi, seaweeds, and other protists'. Richard001 03:13, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Batesian mimicry?

"80% of spiders with Batesian mimicry imitate ants, comprising more than 100 species. Ant-mimicking spiders can be found in the following spider families:"

Surely this is not Batesian but aggressive mimicry since the spiders are using their mimicry to hunt their prey (or at least finagle their way into a nest). The only reference there that seems to be Batesian is Myrmarachne assimilis.

Also, I propose moving most of, if not that entire section, into the currently red linked Ant-mimicking spiders, since it seems fairly common in spiders and it is by far the longest section in the article. Man Over-bored (talk) 15:50, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Primary sources

An editor has added a quantity of material using WP:Primary sources. I've fixed the immediate formatting, typographic and punctuation errors but the use of unreliable sources is more serious; and several statements are entirely unsourced. I'll allow a little time for the problem to be addressed; failing that, the best solution will probably be to remove anything that is not reliably sourced.