Talk:Pack rat

Untitled

Pak Rat Evaluation:

This article references climate proxy associated with the pak rat but does not provide any in depth understanding of it. There is just one reference to the utilization of carbon isotope ratios to help explain the history of the areas surrounding pak rat middens, however there is no explanation of this process. A description of how isotopic composition is used to determine past alterations in global ice abundance would be beneficial in validating the relevance of this information. The article also addresses Bergmann’s Rule as proxy but does not provide a thorough explanation of the Rule itself. In order to endorse this statement, a section explaining that under this theory, it is generalized that organisms of greater body mass are commonly found in regions with a cooler climate, whereas organisms of smaller stature are more often found in historically warmer regions. This understanding would help the reader deduce the benefit of this theory in relation to the study of the pak rat within the realm of global climate change. There are some value statements within the article as well as unspecified claims that lack citations. These are improper analyses and cannot be regarded as viable unless cited. Reference #7 is also a malfunctioning link and thus cannot be considered a valid source. This article does not contain many references, thus consulting further outside research should be done to improve and supplement existing content. Potential sources for said research are listed below. Additionally, Further explanation of mentioned proxies and the means in which they pertain to global climate change on a broader scale would be advantageous.

Citations: Huston, M. A. and Wolverton, S. (2011), Regulation of animal size by eNPP, Bergmann's rule and related phenomena. Ecological Monographs, 81: 349–405. doi:10.1890/10-1523.1

Pergams, Oliver R. W., and Joshua J. Lawler. "Recent and Widespread Rapid Morphological Change in Rodents." PLOS ONE. Public Library of Science, n.d. Web. 02 Mar. 2017. KeyanaA (talk) 04:55, 3 March 2017 (UTC)KeyanaA

Pack Rat Evaluation:

The article didn't list any drawbacks, and didn't take into account natural occurrences that could cause the midden to move. https://www.pearsonhighered.com/content/dam/region-na/us/higher-ed/en/products-services/withgott-5e-info/pdf/ch14.pdf on page 319 mentions various weather scenarios that go along with climate change, and since pack rats middens can show how crops dealt with the climate, it is important to note that other crops could be carried by a flood and be adopted into the midden. This could affect what crops we believe could have grown in various areas.

Also, the fact that animals typically only go after certain types of plants, it is likely that the Pack Rats midden does not show an accurate record of what plants thrived in certain areas, as other plants that may have thrived may not have been as nutritious to the Pack Rats. This fact could be extended upon in the Diet section of the article. PezNadia (talk) 20:36, 01 March 2017 (UTC)

   I think that the article was satisfactory overall in explaining the usage of the proxy in understanding past climate change.  It explains how the   scientists use the remains of the animals that were found in the midden in order to get a sense of the climate during the time. By using the "Bergmann's rule" they can determine what region the animal came from because it is related to the air in the atmosphere. However the article never states a weakness of the proxy method, the article just states that they are reliable in determining the "time capsule of natural life". It also fails to show specific evidence of data analyses of recent practical uses.
   The peer reviewed articles listed are definitely current with a majority being in the past 4 years, and one of the articles in particular (Effects of global warming on wood rat (Neotoma cinerea) body size during the last deglaciation) does a very thorough job of explaining how the proxy is used to determine climate change. However, the two articles that I discovered were not listed as a reference or source. The first peer-reviewed article was titled "Modeling Climate Limits of Plants Found in Sonoran Desert Packrat Middens". This was published by Samantha Arundel in 2002. My second peer-reviewed article was titled "Packrat Middens and Climate Change", and the author was George L. Jacobson.  
   One recommendations is to provide evidence of recent usage of the proxy. Another recommendation is to elaborate more on the strengths and weaknesses of the proxy and ff the developments when it was first used until now. SagulSasu21 (talk) 22:07, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

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Evaluation of Article

Under the "Midden," header, the article mentions that pack rat middens have surpassed pollen records as a "method of study," but they do not clarify what kind of method of study and they do not mention how or why.The citation used for this leads to an unfound page. Also, the entire net paragraph in the middens section goes unreferenced, a citation needs to be added to the end of the paragraph. Also, the grammar needs to be corrected where it states the three factors contributing to resilience of midden should not be in its own sentence. There should be a colon before it lists the factors instead of a period and the factors should be separated by a comma, not a semicolon. This part of the article makes it seem like it was self-published.

This article is a poor explanation of the use of the proxy in past climate because it simply states that the carbon isotope ratios in the middens have been widely studied but do not go on to elaborate how these studies show information of past climate. This is making an assumption that the reader already knows how carbon isotopes portray climate data. There should be a wikilink to a page about carbon isotopes and how we can decipher climate data from the isotopes. it only goes on to say how size of the pack rat gives us information about temperature through Bergmann's rule. It needs to elaborate on how these factors give us information about climate and include more examples of how middens can help determine past climate. The article does not give any sort of weaknesses of the climate proxy, it only states that it has been used more than pollen records but does not go in to detail about why.

A peer reviewed article that would contribute to this information would be http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0168933#sec002 this article mentions where the middens of pack rats are found and how changes in climate are shown by the vegetation content of midden. Another peer reviewed article that could be helpful is https://geochange.er.usgs.gov/midden/ this article uses discourse that is easier to understand in terms of scientific language. It also uses graphs that display the radiocarbon all the way from 50,000 years ago. Hayes.966 (talk) 08:13, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Untitled

"Historically, houses in or near ghost towns such as Crestone, Colorado were typically infested with pack rats. In the days before television, this provided a measure of entertainment to the sensation-starved residents." is it just me, or does that sound slightly random? 86.84.54.179 20:55, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Merger Tag

• Merge - Articles should be merged, the midden does not require it's own article. Headphonos 13:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

As the guy who started packrat midden, I don't mind. - BanyanTree 14:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that this article should also be part of the climate change article.

I agree that Pack Rat and midden should be merged, and I wouldnt mind if human pack rat were combined also. Macroqueen 17:16, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

• Definite Merge Yes, there's no reason the midden should be separate from the animal itself. It's just a behavior of the animal.

Name

Isn't "woodrat" a more common name for Neotoma? Ucucha 19:26, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

'More common,' according to whom? According to search engines and the internet? No, by a factor of several thousandfold. According to our personal experiences? No, they don't matter. According to text books? No, scholar.google.com yields more hits for packrat v woodrat (with qualifying presence of the term neotoma within six words). So no, I'm afraid woodrat isn't a more common name, although thank you for teaching me a name for packrat I had never heard of before. Sadly it's not often I learn new things anymore so I appreciate it. BaSH PR0MPT (talk) 09:42, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Packrat vs. Pack Rat

The intro says that the official name is "Packrat" even though "Pack rat" is commonly used. Shouldn't the article's title take on the official spelling? At least, I think that's what's commonly done on most articles. However, I don't know for sure so I thought I'd check here first. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Golmschenk (talk • contribs) 02:54, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

yes, woodrat is the common term used for rodents in the genus Neotoma; packrat (one word) is an alternative. It tends to be used in non-scientific contexts. The American Society of Mammalogists produces species accounts that provide all kinds of information on mammals of the world. Someone needs to go into the ones written for woodrats and add it in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.24.145.127 (talk) 21:03, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Role in paleontology, etc.

It may be worth noting that we owe pack rats for many paleolithic finds of European cave lions, cave bears, and other bones that have been hoarded - significant evidence suggests that most 'caves full of bones' were ex post facto collections made by pack rats collecting bright objects, including thousands of bones of dead animals. I have zero knowledge of these beasties besides their role in delivering to us some pretty amazing scientific finds through their indefatigable foraging for oddities. BaSH PR0MPT (talk) 09:38, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

References for Pack Rat Midden needs updated

The reference in this article (#7) is no longer active and should be replaced with a peer-reviewed source if possible. The subtopic about Pack Rat Midden should also contain more sources if possible as it only had one before (which doesn't work anymore) to be a more credible source.

Jtra1n (talk) 23:33, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Source Seven is Broken and a General Critique

The link for source seven is broken. This is very troubling considering that the entire subsection of "Midden" is dependent on this source, additionally half of the text for the "Climate Change Indicators" section depends on this single source. All of the text from "A pack rat midden is a debris pile constructed by a woodrat. A midden may preserve the materials incorporated into it for up to 50,000 years, thus may be analyzed to reconstruct their original environment, and comparisons between middens allow a record of vegetative and climate change to be built. Examinations and comparisons of pack rat middens have largely supplanted pollen records as a method of study in the regions where they are available.[7] Active pack rat midden in northern Nevada In the absence of rock crevices or caves, the dens are often built under trees or bushes. The pack rats will also use plant fragments, animal dung, and small rocks in building the den. The vast majority of the materials will be from a radius of several dozen yards of the nest. Woodrats often urinate on the debris piles; sugar and other substances in the urine crystallize as it dries out, creating a material known as amberat, which under some conditions can cement the midden together. The resilience of the middens is aided by three factors. The crystallized urine dramatically slows the decay of the materials in the midden; the dry climate of the American Southwest further slows the decay; and middens protected from the elements under rock overhangs or in caves survive longer. Climate change indicators Zoologists examine the remains of animals in middens to get a sense of the fauna in the neighborhood of the midden, while paleobotanists can reconstruct the vegetation that grew nearby. Middens are considered reliable "time capsules" of natural life, centuries and millennia after they occurred. Woodrat middens are composed of many things, including plants macrofossils and fecal pellets. Bushy-tailed woodrat on midden Paleo-ecologists have used a variety of techniques to analyze the plant and animal material in pack rat middens describe paleo-communities and infer paleo-climate. For example, the plant species present in middens, and the carbon isotope ratios on material in middens have been widely studied.[7]" all depends on source 7 and is the vast majority of the article that pertains to climate.

Most of the other sources for this article are recent, and reference 8 is very credible, however there are very little workable references for the sections related to climate. It also never mentions how the isotopes in Woodrat pellets can be used for Paleoclimatology. It would be useful to add more information on the methods that data is recorded from the plant and animal remains.

This article generally does a decent job at explaining how middens are used in Paleoclimatology. However, there is little information on how middens are limited in the way that one can measure data about past climate. There is no comment on the limitations of this method nor are there any quantitative comments on its accuracy. Additionally, there are no specific examples of situations in which middens were used for Paleoclimatology. One peer review article linked here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033589415000745 gives a specific instance in California where middens were used for research to understand the past climate of the Mojave desert. Here is another peer reviewed article that overviews how middens are used in Paleoclimatology is this peer reviewed article on the climate of Colorado: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jbi.12431/full . --Rebecca.salamacha (talk) 03:03, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Article evaluation

1. Overall, the article decently explains how middens are used as a proxy measure to help scientists understand past climates. There is very little data analysis, however the editor clearly explains the correlation between fecal pellet size, pack rat size, and the climate conditions at a given time. The article also doesn’t provide much detail on the assumptions of using middens as a proxy measure. The article does indirectly address the strengths of the proxy in that midden records have replaced pollen records in the area because it provides an analysis of earlier and better preserved natural materials. However, I don’t recall the article addressing the weaknesses of using middens as proxies.

2. The peer-reviewed articles listed are appropriate, however, one of the cited links is broken. Two peer-reviewed articles on pack rats/middens are as followed: a. http://www.pmtk9.com/images/packrat.pdf b. http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1894/0038-4909%282005%29050%5B0209%3APMALHE%5D2.0.CO%3B2?journalCode=swna Neither one of these articles was listed on the Wikipedia article.

3. One improvement for the article would be to include more relevant (and retraceable) citations so that readers can not only fact-check, but can also utilize those references to learn more information if desired. Another improvement would be to include additional details on the topic in it’s entirety, including more information on the types of climate-related information that can be gathered from pack rats and/or middens. Kayla0013 (talk) 17:28, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Article Critique

Overall, this article does provide necessary information that leads to the understanding of the role studying pack rats and middens plays while determining past climatic characteristics, however, I noticed a few aspects the article lacks regarding the general aspects of paleoclimatology. First, the article does not explain what exactly paleoclimatology is or why it matters. Furthermore, it does not differentiate or identify strengths or weaknesses within the proxy method or use any type of data analysis to explain the nature of paleoclimatology or further present the argument. The article does, however, explain some assumptions that are made when using pack rats and middens to identify climate changes and events by explaining Bergmann's Rule and how this rule allows scientists to use the size of rat pellets found within middens to establish relative temperatures throughout time. In a general sense, I think the article does a good job at introducing the concept, but could be reworded in such a way to make it a bit easier to follow, and some additions about paleoclimatology (or maybe a link to the paleoclimatology page) to provide all of the information necessary for a full understanding. I also think that the photos of pack rats add to the physical aesthetics of the page, but aren't really relevant to the paleoclimatology argument. I think charts of data retrieved using this proxy method would make a better addition to the page than the existing photos. The sources are relatively up to date (albeit one from 1995) and trustworthy, except for source 7, whose page no longer exists. This peer reviewed article uses proxies to prove its argument, which could provide some useful information about proxies in general that could serve as good additions to the Pack rat article: http://www.pnas.org/content/103/4/837.short This peer reviewed article explains how pack rat middens lead to the "reconstruction of past desert vegetation along the Colorado River", which presents a particular use for packrat proxies, making the article more interesting and informative: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003101829090120V Neither of these articles were used for the pack rat article. Kadeynelson (talk) 02:00, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Article Evaluation

1.The article clearly explains how middens are used as a proxy measure. It explains that middens can reveal information about the past climate from the plant species found within the middens and the carbon isotope ratio of the material. The article does not however describe data analysis or assumptions in detail. The article mentions that middens have surpassed pollen records as a proxy, but it doesn’t talk about the cons or downsides to using middens as a record other than their implied scarcity.

2.Link #7 gives a 404 error, but otherwise the articles are appropriate and current. Two peer reviewed articles discussing pack rat mittens as proxys are linked: http://people.uncw.edu/emslies/documents/Emslieetal.2015pinonpalaeohistoryinColorado.pdf http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2012.02704.x/abstract These are not used in the article.

3.An improvement that can be made would be to clean up the citations that link to 404’d pages. The article could also talk more about the feasibility of mittens as a proxy method and provide more examples of mittens being used in the field of paleoclimatology. Sea eh ell (talk) 05:55, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

General critiques

1. The article clearly discussed data analysis in a concise manner and maybe even considerable for general public readers so as not to confuse them. I only notice one or two assumptions about the proxy data made. It's there basically to sum up what the data analysis would be looking at and predicting from the paleo-climate. I do not see any strengths or weaknesses about this proxy.

2. Two peer reviewed articles, I found to be beneficial/related are: "Influence of tropical easterlies in southern Africa's winter rainfall zone during the Holocene" (Chase, Lim, Chevalier, Boom, Carr, Meadows, and Reimer 2015) and "Modeling climate limits of plants found in Sonoran Desert packrat middens" (Arundel 2002)

3. Under the midden section of the article, it would be beneficial to discuss some strengths and weaknesses of the use of middens as proxy data. I'm sure the referenced articles for this section are up to date but they were just hard to find. Maybe adding some articles that would be easier to validate as "peer-reviewed" would be helpful and would also add more in depth facts about data analysis used in the middens. The assumptions are great, adding more might help readers understand what scientists are trying to get from all the data analysis discussed in the article.

BritStewart (talk) 08:05, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Article Critique on Packrats

The article explains pretty thoroughly what a Woodrat is and how their midden is used to examine and correlate climate change in different regions. However,I noticed that the article doesn't tackle data analyses at all nor does it address the weakness of the proxy method. I did notice that some of the links to the sources did not work or the page no longer existed for example, the link labeled "packrat midden research in the Grand canyon" says that the page is not found. For strength on the proxy it only mentions that the midden is a good at preserving natural life and useful for determining climate change in different regions. The article tied the background of packrats into how their midden could be climate change indicators but the second actually pertaining to how the midden indicates climate change was rather short,there is much room for elaboration in that section.Also, the reproduction and life cycle of the Woodrats could have been left out, I saw that as a small distraction because the article seemed to flow until the size portion.   

The peer reviewed articles are all current, ranging from 2012-2016. The only one I noticed did not show any work was the article on the "Packrat midden research in the grand canyon." I did however find a two journals that I thought to be useful for this article. The first peer reviewed article titled "Reliability of Macrofossils in Woodrat (Neotoma) middens for density low density tree populations" published in 2011 by Paleontological society. The second article that I found was "A GIS model to predict the location of fossil packrat (Neotoma) middens in central Navada" written in by Scott A. Mensing, Robert G. Elston Jr, Gary L. Raines, Robin J. Tausch and Cheryl L. Nowak in 2000. I recommend that more data be added to elaborate on strengths of the proxy that the article pertains to as well as the weaknesses of the proxy. More research should be listed to aid in the assumptions of how the packrat findings help with the development of the proxy to determine different climate changes indifferent regions by how much the Packrat ingest.Lastly there are a few graphs in the journals I chose that could be useful pictures if added to the articles. As I have mentioned, their is an area that could be taken out of the article and to replace it, the articles I listed would be useful in tying together the idea of what is in the midden and the amount of the food intact can be a sign of climate change KinahGlo (talk) 14:22, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Article Evaluation of Pack Rats

The following article thoroughly explains how pack rats can help us with knowledge of climate in the past. Since they have collected items that can be over 50,000 years old, we can use that to help determine how the climate used to be. Their crystallized urine on the nests also benefit our knowledge of the climate.

The reference ""Packrat Midden Research in the Grand Canyon". Cpluhna.nau.edu. Retrieved 2013-01-07." Leads to a "page not found" website so there are definitely errors with the reference page. There are peer-reviewed articles that I found that are not used the reference page that could be added.

Recommendations: Better pictures of what the midden look like would be very helpful. Most of the pictures are very far away. Also, Having pictures of specific items found in the nest that can be used for the information of climate in the past would be very helpful.

Adams.1714 (talk) 01:25, 2 March 2017 (UTC) Ethan Adams

Pack Rats as Climate Change Indicators Critique

   There is only really one paragraph (the last paragraph) that specifically addresses how Pack Rats are used as a proxy for climate change. This paragraph does give a solid explanation of how woodrat body size, determined via pellet to body ratio, can reflect climate differences using Bergmann's rule. However, no examples of how the data has been used were provided. No revelation of the assumptions of this method were detailed. Additionally, the strengths and weaknesses were not mentioned. 

   Concerning the use of pack rats as a climate change proxy, only one article was cited. The report: Evolution of Body Size in the Woodrat over the Past 25,000 Years of Climate Change--was cited. This article is reliable and peer-reviewed. However information was only pulled from the abstract. I believe evidence for pack rats as a climate proxy would be greatly strengthened by detailing further evidence and examples from the full report. 

Two additional sources I would recommend are:

• https://www2.usgs.gov/climate_landuse/clu_rd/paleoclimate/archives.asp
• http://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/ecological-footprints/pack-rat-middens.html

   I believe this article would benefit from the addition of more evidence of how pack rats have been used as a proxy. In the 1960s, after having studied pack rat middens for years, their ability to be used as proxies was discovered. I also believe the article would benefit from expanding the resources it pull from for citing pack rat's use as a proxy. 

--Meavefryer (talk) 13:21, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Article Critique

The article does a decent job of explaining how this proxy can help us understand past climate. While they make it clear that the middens are well preserved by the packrats, their explanation of how the scientists analyze the plant material is not clear. There is not any clear data analysis or assumptions made. A possible strength identified is that they can date back 50,000 years and that they have surpassed pollen records.

The peer review articles used by this site seem to be mostly current and appropriate to use. Source #4, however, does not seem to be peer reviewed due to its lack of editors and author names. The first source that I found was the book Packrat Middens: The Last 40,000 Years of Biotic Change, which is edited by Julio L. Bentancourt, Thomas R. Van Devender, and Paul Schultz Martin. This was the first source that the Wikipedia article used and cited. The next source was in a Journal by Robert S. Thomspon and Katherine H. Anderson, Biomes of Western North America at 18,000, 6000 and 0 14C yr Reconstructed from Pollen and Packrat Midden Data. This source was not used by the article, but would likely be a helpful example.

This article could be improved by including better pictures of the packrat midden so that we could get a better understanding of what it looks like and the size of it. In addition to that, more information about how the midden is set up and tested to figure out paleoclimate would be beneficial. Deliarandolph (talk) 13:58, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Species Range

I find it odd that this article seems to have been subject to an immense amount of scrutiny, "critiques" and "evaluations", but I don't see any mention of the fact that the range of the species variants from a global perspective is never explicitly stated - we read that they "reach their greatest diversity in the deserts of the western United States and northern Mexico", but out of what full extent? are they confined to the western hemisphere? The northern hemisphere? Can't tell. This is a pretty severe deficiency, as far as I can see. A fine opportunity for someone knowledgeable to rectify. Please don't hesitate. 2001:56A:F0E9:9B00:C9B5:73E2:363E:BB6F (talk) 18:39, 20 February 2020 (UTC)just_some_wiki_reader.

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Changed link

In the section "[m]idden", I piped the link "climate change" to "climate variability and change", since this is past climate change being written about, not the current climate crisis. Could anyone please tell me if this was the right thing to do? Thylacine24 (talk) 01:54, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Environmental physiology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 August 2022 and 5 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): HLStewart2000 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: BioWiki4155, Manisendra.

— Assignment last updated by Jessicaphillips10 (talk) 01:16, 3 October 2022 (UTC)