Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Armillaria luteobubalina/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 14:11, 29 July 2010 [1].

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Armillaria luteobubalina

Armillaria luteobubalina (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured article candidates/Armillaria luteobubalina/archive1

Nominator(s): Sasata (talk) 04:15, 15 July 2010 (UTC), Casliber

This article is about a tree-killing fungus from Down Under, first discovered in the 1970s in a Eucalyptus plantation—a slowly-expanding circle of dead trees grim evidence of its subterranean biological machinations. Using a collaborative, cross-continental approach to acquiring journal articles, Casliber and I have developed a comprehensive, yet (we hope) readable account of this organism's history and biology. Thanks for reading Sasata (talk) 04:15, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

• needless to say I support as co-nominator. It is about as comprehensive as can be with articles scoured. I feel the prose is pretty good and any suggestions can be fixed pretty readily. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:13, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

• Checks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 12:08, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

• No dabs, one apparent suspicious link on the checker actually works fine.
• Images all appropriately licensed
• Sources, OK except that 14 has a retrieval date, not needed for web versions of RL docs, also inconsistent since other refs to same publication, like 25. don't have a download date

• I don't understand... #14 links to a downloadable PDF, so the accessdate is needed (to my understanding) to indicate a date on which the link worked. #25 has no downloadable PDF, so an accessdate is unnecessary. Am I misinterpreting something? Sasata (talk) 15:39, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
  • I think JIM assumed that both ref being from the same journal, both should automatically be available. When one notes that ref #25 is from 1976, it should come as no surprise that it might not be available online. Circéus (talk)

• It's not a big deal if the date stays, but personally I've assumed that you put the date on web-only pages because the content might change, but not for on-line copies of real documents where the content is fixed and can in any case be verified by accessing a hard copy. In other words, the date is for verification, not for downloadability. Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Citation_styles only mentions retrieval dates under the web section. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:00, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

• No big deal to me either, but is there any way the retrieval date might be useful for a wayback machine search if the document goes offline? Does anyone know if it archives PDFs? Sasata (talk) 22:55, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Support: All comments addressed; the usual good work. (I was the GA reviewer.) Ucucha 05:52, 17 July 2010 (UTC) *Comments—

• Why are the European and North American Biological Species relevant to this article?

• I think it's relevant because it describes analogous situations in Europe and North America, where before mating and molecular analysis mycologists believed that all Armillaria were just a pleiomorphic A. mellea. I'll think about it and try to present that rationale more clearly in the article. Sasata (talk) 18:15, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

• Wouldn't it be better then to limit it to something like "Using similar techniques, mycologists found that the Armillaria mellea complex in Europe and North America in fact consisted of five and ten distinct species, respectively."? Ucucha 05:41, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

• Yeah, you've convinced me, no meaning is lost by trimming some of the details; I've replaced with your suggestion. Sasata (talk) 22:48, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

• "Five other Armillaria species are found in Australia."—why are only three compared?

retrieved info on the other two and added. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:09, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

• "Although they are very similar, specimens of A. luteobubalina collected from Australia and New Zealand"—New Zealand? Also, the following sentence suggests A. montagnei is a South American species, but subsequently the article mentions that it occurs in Australia.

• Removed the N.Z. mention-I double checked, and this species does not occur there. I altered the wording of the next sentence so as not to imply that A. montagnei was only from South America (updated that species article too). Sasata (talk) 20:57, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks. Wouldn't the sentence about spore size fit better under "Similar species"? Ucucha 05:41, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, I think it goes better in the latter place - moved. Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:14, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

• "In this case, the cases"—can one case be changed to a different word?

• Thanks for your comments. I fixed the easy one, and will work on the others in the next couple of days. Sasata (talk) 18:15, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Ucucha 15:54, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

• Support. Unexpectedly interesting, perhaps because I'm a one-time sufferer from a European species. If they only discovered it in the 1970s, what brave post-grad or convict was used to discover it was edible? I thought you treated them better nowadays :) There seems to be something missing from "and able to amplify absorptive surface of peripheral hyphae in response to the presence of nutrient-rich soil" - a "the"? Johnbod (talk) 18:49, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

definite article added. I think it is the right place. Sasata can doublecheck when he's on next. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:36, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Yup! Sasata (talk) 22:48, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Support Comments: Great article as always. Only one question/comment:

• Prior to learning that this may be an ancient lineage (in the "Habitat and distribution" section), dating to the break-up of Gondwana, I was wondering how this species species got to different sides of the Pacific Ocean. In fact, I was expecting it to be mentioned in the "History and phylogeny" section. Your thoughts? Also, if the fungus was found throughout Gondwana, are there any related species in Madagascar, India, or Africa? Alternatively, have no sources considered that the species may have been introduced to S. America?

That's it! I'm assuming the literature search was exhaustive, as always. Even the images look good, although File:Rhizomorph_Armillaria.jpg could use a standard information box. – VisionHolder « talk » 22:34, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

• I've added this sentence to address your second question: "Genetic differences between isolates in the South American and Australian populations indicate a long period of geographical separation, and the authors suggest that they "later might be regarded as independent taxa."" There are Armillaria species in India and (South) Africa (don't know about Madagascar), but they are introduced species in Africa, and the Coetzee 2003 paper says "It is unlikely that isolates from Indonesia and Malaysia in this study are related to species in India". Anyway, I'll leave broader discussion of global distributions of Armillaria to the genus article. Cas, what do you say about having this stuff in the history section and phylogeny section? Sasata (talk) 02:52, 23 July 2010 (UTC) (p.s. standard infobox now added to image). Sasata (talk) 03:16, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

• I think the context of how the concepts of species (from broad/universal mellea to what we have now, and the fact that it is (like many fungi genera) probably still in a state of flux somewhat is integral to understanding what is meant by the concept of this taxon. This extra information is good to have in. I have just been to the libary (finally) and taken photos of the 1982 Watling article on the genus Armillaria to get my head around this. I have looked at many articles on gondwanan taxa over the years, and discussion on how they have navigated the cretaceous break up of gondwana varies from none to very detailed - there are similar discussions with lovebirds which are unexpectedly related to Australian parrots and many Australian and south African proteaceae which are more closely related to forms across the Indian Ocean indicating a high level of diversity before the breakup...but I digress. Fungal coverage is patchy compared with vertebrates, so it would not surprise me if studies in madagascar have been limited or lacking to date. Even in Australia, ony 5% of mushroom taxa are said to have been described....Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:22, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

• Update - there is Armillaria heimii from Africa which was first described in Madagascar. I need to sleep now but can look further into it some time tomorrow. Just scanning google entries suggested it was yet another name applied broadly to what may be several species (groan...) so not sure what we can add - if not a specific relative then would I suspect be better off in genus article Armillaria. Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:58, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

• Moar info: "Along the same lines, Coetzee et al. (2001) surveyed numerous Armillaria taxa to ascertain infrageneric relation- ships. Although most species from Australia/New Zealand [A. luteobubalina Watling & Kile, A. pallidula Kile & Watling, A. fumosa Kile & Watling, A. novae-zelandiae (G. Stev.) Herink, A. limonea (G. Stev.) Boesw.] formed a well- defined, monophyletic clade together with two African taxa (A. heimii Pegler, A. fuscipes Petch), one Antipodal species, A. hinnulea Kile & Watling, showed clear relationships to Northern Hemisphere species, including A. mellea and A. tabescens (Scop.) Emel. The means for such migration (or origin and subsequent migrations) across the equator remain unknown, although human mediation is one candidate." from Petersen & Hughes, 2007 Someday this will go into the genus article. Sasata (talk) 18:00, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

This is fascinating! I can't wait to see you guys write a genus article. I don't know if this would violate WP:SYNTH, but could something general be said about the confusion and the potential wide distribution caused by the break-up of Gondwana? If anything, it could be a little clearer earlier on in the article that the species distribution is related to plate techtonics, not the introduction of species to a landmass. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:05, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Its Gondwanan origin is now mentioned in the final sentence of the lead. Sasata (talk) 16:11, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks good! I like the changes. Only minor thing would be to put an estimated date for when Godwana started to break up or an estimated date range for the entire process up in the lead. Otherwise, changing to support. – VisionHolder « talk » 18:02, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

• Support I thought I'd already done so, but apparently not Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:20, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.