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Ovalipes catharus

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Ovalipes catharus (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

As of 3 January 2025, 22:49 (UTC), this page is active and open for discussion. An FAC coordinator will be responsible for closing the nomination.
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Nominator(s): TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 17:15, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the New Zealand paddle crab, Ovalipes catharus. It's one of twelve species of Ovalipes and the only one found in New Zealand. Known for their paddle-shaped rear legs, high aggression, voraciousness, and proneness to cannibalism. I found this a couple months back in this state, where its last two major contributions were by Prosperosity and Ttbioclass (the latter being a student editor who did almost all of the work on the 'Mating and reproduction' section). However, major edits prior to these – while helping to expand the article – had what I felt were severe problems with copy-editing and focus (for example, at one point, comparing these crabs to prawns by saying they don't have a narrow body and tail). I quickly realized I had to rip out basically everything before the 'Mating and reproduction' section and start from scratch, and so I did. I worked on improving this to GA status over a month or so, reviewed by Esculenta, and at this point, I want to stress test it as a FAC because I think I've done about as much as I can with it after the GA review.

Disclaimers:

  • The Osborne 1987 PhD thesis is cited so much because it really was a landmark work on O. catharus. Attempts to cite peer-reviewed journal articles for this information would just result in citing something that cites Osborne 1987 in some way which is likely indirect to what we need to communicate. I promise it seems absurd until you realize that probably 80% of the works cited in this article also cite Osborne in some way; it's just that seminal.
  • The Richards 1992 master's thesis is discussed in the GA review, and I think its usage is easily defensible. The R.J. Davidson 1987 master's thesis was written at a time where R.J. Davidson was already an expert on this behavior, having published about almost this exact subject the year prior (note there are two pre-eminent O. catharus experts named Davidson, the other being G.W.).
  • There are still unused refideas which I've suggested, but for the vast majority of them, I think they walk a fine line between meticulous and extraneous detail. I just keep them there in case someone has a revelation about how to include them in a relevant way (or, in the case of H.H. Taylor et al. 1992, in case I ever get access to that $200 book).
  • I really would love to have better images in the infobox (the dorsal view of the preserved specimen is a great angle but lacks the real colors of O. catharus due to the preservation, and the ventral view despite being a great angle with correct colors is literally a dead crab in a puddle on the shore), but these were the best suitably licensed images I could find of these two crucial perspectives of the crab.
  • If there's anything even remotely important I didn't cover in the article, you can probably audit that by checking either in the Fisheries 2023 citation or the McLay 1988 one.
  • I had minimal involvement with the 'Mating and reproduction' section, but reviewing it, it seems to hold up. I've since rewritten the entire 'Mating and reproduction' section to my liking. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 17:15, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

I'm very confused. At Commons, I licensed it under "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International". At the source, it's licensed under "Copyright Museums Victoria / CC BY (Licensed as Attribution 4.0 International)". I don't see the discrepancy. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 19:33, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies; I was looking at something else. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:07, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's all good! It just worried me for a second because I'm convinced that's the only genuinely good freely licensed image of this variety on the entire Internet. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 02:35, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Generalissima

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Ooh, New Zealand biology? Mark me down for a prose review to come. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 05:47, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • TheTechnician27 A most preliminary thought; this would be quite a good use case for SFNs or Harvids. Especially with larger sources like Osborne 1987, readers will struggle with where to find the claim within the source material without a page number for each cite. This will also make the job of source reviewers much, much easier. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 05:51, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I was thinking about doing that, but I didn't know to what extent they were used for journal articles/theses rather than books. I can definitely go ahead and implement that (today, even), since I agree it'd be especially useful for Osborne 1987. Incidentally, I checked out Endemic flora of the Chatham Islands on your list of articles to see if O. catharus was there (before noticing it said "endemic" and "flora", duh), and then I realized it was a FLC. Since I've been thinking about featured lists myself (like is Paralomis a list or an article? I really don't know at this point!), I think I'll familiarize myself with the criteria and take a look at it. This isn't an invitation for you not to tear this article to shreds, though; since I'm tentatively planning to target another species of Ovalipes, I have a personal, vested interest in making this article as robust as possible to be able to draw on its structure in the future. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 15:18, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Generalissima is being tactful. Eg, if I were reviewing then - to select the first random example I came across - I would want each of those ten references to Haddon narrowing down to something tighter than the entire six-page article; ideally a single page each. Even as a closing coordinator I would be unhappy if there were several like that, or if they had longer page ranges. Like Haddon and Wear, or Fenton et al. As for Glaessner - you want me to wade through 55 pages to verify your cite?! I recommend that you take Generalissima's advice and beseech her to keep giving it. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:24, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To answer your question above tho, I think the typical strategy for large genera like that is to have the genus article be an article while splitting off the table of each species into its own list (though a basic taxonomic list of species without the details/subspecies/etc. is often included within the genus article itself from what i've seen) Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 00:16, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All done! All remaining sources which don't use {{sfn}} are ones where we only use at most three pages. The lone exception to this is Vennell 2022, which spans six pages, because I don't have access to the book and have to take (and willingly trust) Prosperosity's word for it. I wasn't trying to pull a fast one here; I just didn't know what the typical sentiment around using {{sfn}} for journal articles and theses was compared to book citations. @Gog the Mild:, I did ask for this article to be torn to shreds, so I hope you'll believe me when I say that I appreciate the nature and manner of your feedback. During this process, I also corrected several pieces of misinformation, and I strongly believe these were among the last if not the last ones. A few of these were small-to-moderate mistakes I directly made, but some were in the 'Mating and reproduction' section which I realize in hindsight that I was inappropriately lax and frankly negligent in my review of. I think I had a subtle preconceived notion going in that this was the "good part" of the article. I apologize for grinding the review to a halt right as it got started, but I think it should be able to proceed as normal now. If nothing else, this probably cleared out several problems that would've come up anyway. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 06:08, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • One comment: I can't do a full review, but its recommended that there be no cites in the lead paragraphs. They are meant to summarize the body of the article which should already be cited. Otherwise, good luck. We need a crab FA article. LittleJerry (talk) 00:29, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I understand the premise here, but I heavily disagree that the lead should be uncited. This sort of stylistic prescriptivism 1) directly contradicts WP:LEADCITE which indicates editors are free to choose either way, 2) makes the lead substantially less maintainable by forcing editors to go digging in the article to then find a citation, and 3) is to the detriment of a reader who might simply want to get the gist of a subject but still wants to verify something we're saying. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 05:02, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Jens

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Great to see this here! Looks mostly good, but I have two general concerns that should be addressed:

First, the article could be more accessible. Please have a look at WP:MTAU. This is especially important for an FA, since when it appears on the main page, it will be read by non-experts. You are not writing for experts. Specifically, whenever possible, the reader should not have to follow links in order to get a basic understanding of the text. In some cases, you could replace jargon with more common terms (maybe "pincers" and "rearward" instead of "proximal"), and in others, you could add a brief in-text explanation in brackets. In particular, I think that these terms would benefit from such an in-text explanation: chelipeds, dactyli, fingers (what does it mean in the context of crabs?), isometric, osmoconformer/osmoregulator, stenotherm, Phosphorylation of ADP.

Second, the "Taxonomy" and "Diet" sections seem to be shorter and less specific than other sections (particularly the description section). The Diet section contains some general statements that are already covered in much greater detail in the "Description" (maybe it is worth to move those discussions down to "Diet")? And maybe rename the section to the more general "Feeding"? There are a couple of papers concerned with specific aspects on the biology of this species, so there seems to be more to add. Regarding the taxonomy:

  • can we add the etymology of "catharus"?
  • maybe there is something more to add on the research history? Circumstances of the 1843 description maybe? For example, was the description based on life specimens, or based on a collected one (holotype collected where?)
  • The "Taxonomy" should have a little bit on the classification of Ovalipes itself. Yes, you have a footnote, but I think it warrants spelling out in the main text. Also, it does not seem there is consensus that Ovalipes sits within Ovalipidae, as this study ([1]) proposes something else.

Other comments:

  • Ovalipes catharus has an oval-shaped, streamlined, and slightly grainy carapace with five large teeth to either side of the eyes and four teeth at the front. It is overall sandy grey with orange-red highlights and dotted with small, brown spots. Its carapace – I suggest to switch the order. Discuss the color (including the white underside, too), and then the carapace shape, or vice versa, but not carapace -> color -> carapace -> color as it is currently.
  • a butterfly-shaped mark – remove the link to "butterfly"? It does not help I think.
  • somewhat hairy, and a line of setae runs from – Is "hairy" refering to setae, too, or are these different structures?
  • as a form of signalling – link to Animal communication?
  • chelae – maybe replace with "pincer" or add that word in a bracket)?
  • on the posterior border of the arms – what is the "posterior border"? Doesn't that depend on posture?
  • but it may exhibit negative allometry in males – add "(grows more slowely)"?
  • Relative length diminishes compared to the width – the "relative" is redundant here, I propose to remove it.
  • It can reverse its ventilatory flow – It would help to add a bit of context here; what does it mean to reverse the ventilatory flow, and why are they doing that?
  • Internal anatomy – This section has much stuff that's not anatomy, including the paragraph on biochemistry.
  • Ovalipes catharus is colloquially known as the paddle crab, the common swimming crab, or Māori: pāpaka. They were – Here you address the species in plural, elsewhere you use singular. That should be consistent (I think the convention is to use singular when talking about the species).
  • Having been synonymised with O. punctatus alongside three other species prior to 1968, O. catharus is part of a distinct subgroup of Ovalipes which also includes O. australiensis, O. elongatus, O. georgei, O. punctatus, – When O. punctatus is a synonym, why is that one still listed and appears as a separate species in the cladogram?
  • fine granules on the raised ridges of the top side of its hands – "Hands"? Are these the pincers?
  • Ovalipes catharus is native to New Zealand, where it can be found from Stewart Island to Northland and in the Chatham Islands. They are also uncommon on the southern coast of Australia – "also uncommon" somehow implies they are uncommon in New Zealand.
  • Members of the isolated population of O. catharus from the Chatham Islands tend to be larger and take longer to mature than those in mainland New Zealand. – that does not belong under "Taxonomy" I think.
  • The following cladogram – It would help to date this (e.g., "from a 1998 study") and indicate on what it is based on (molecular data?).
  • Large Ovalipes catharus tend to feed less frequently but generally on algae as well as on larger animals s – Can't quite follow. They feed less frequently in general? Or they feed infrequently on algae and frequently on animals? "Frequently but generally" confuses me.
  • Ovalipes catharus does not appear to be typically parasitised by nematodes or barnacles.[86] Instead, the overwhelming majority of them – A bit confusing, needed to read several times. I think the general advice applies: State the most important facts first (here, Triticella capsularis), then add the details/secundary info (the parasites that don't apply to this species).
  • through vigorous waving of the female's body, which disturbs their egg cases and causes them to break out.[98] Females generally release their larvae at night. – How females release their larvae should come later in the text, after the more general information, no?
  • How many batches of eggs does a female produce per season?
  • The zip is accompanied by what may be a courtship display whereby the crab "walks forward and flicks both swimming paddles in a twisting motion." – I recommend to rephrase this in your own words; I don't see why this should be quoted. Also, if you quote, you would have to state the author of that quote in-text according to the WP guidelines, I believe.
  • The females of a group – what "group"? Are they gregarious?
  • In one example, male crabs that had not cannibalised females readily accepted food, while those that had engaged in cannibalism rarely did. – Ok, it does not accept food because it just ate, but what's the point?
  • Males of O. catharus sometimes practice sexual cannibalism toward females.[13] This occurs when the female is soft-shelled and therefore vulnerable after moulting.[13] Male crabs generally protect the females during mating, but afterward, the female is vulnerable to cannibalism by other males or, less commonly, by her partner – "Secual cannibalism" is cannibalism between mating partners, right? But the text goes on to talk about cannibalism by other males, which is confusing.
  • The crabs are known to be a traditional food source – do we really need the "known to be" here?
  • There is a huge box in the talk page ("The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future") – has this been resolved, can it be removed?
  • Hope this helps. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 03:50, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry this response isn't in the correct order: the order itself didn't seem relevant, and I didn't feel like sorting it.
  • I think that these terms would benefit from such an in-text explanation: chelipeds, dactyli, fingers (what does it mean in the context of crabs?), isometric, osmoconformer/osmoregulator, stenotherm, Phosphorylation of ADP[, and proximal].
    • I've just eliminated the use of "isometric", because I agree it didn't really add anything. I've also given a brief description of 'stenotherm', because I agree it's trivial to explain inline. I've now added that the chelipeds are the "front legs" and informally called the chela "pincers" before introducing proper terminology in en-dashes or parentheses. Lastly, I've explained what the dactyli are in en-dashes. All of these I think cater to the casual reader without harming the experience of a serious reader. The next two points will be justifications for ones I disagree with you on.
    • Starting with 'Internal anatomy', I heavily disagree with most of this. In an 'Internal anatomy' section for a crab, there's some expectation that anatomical terminology will be used as needed; as noted in WP:MTAU, the lead should always be as accessible as possible, but some sections beyond that simply can't trip over themselves to explain every bit of terminology without losing their usefulness: "Wikipedia strives to be a serious reference resource, and highly technical subject matter still belongs in some Wikipedia articles. Increasing the understandability of technical content is intended to be an improvement to the article for the benefit of the less knowledgeable readers, but this should be done without reducing the value to readers with more technical background." Plenty of our coverage of internal anatomy is inherently rooted in wikilinking to terminology, for example (I couldn't find any recent anatomy FAs): pancreas, lung, gallbladder, etc. If you take a look at our definition of osmoregulation, that's about as basic as it gets, and that already includes terminology like "osmotic pressure". The part about "phosphorylation of ADP" (something which, to my recollection, is already high school biology) is already a significant reduction from the jargon present in the paper which talks in-depth about RCR-1 ratios; that is, this is already significantly over-explained solely for accessibility, and it would effectively be a coatrack within a coatrack to try to explain this process.
    • Regarding external anatomy, "fingers" in the context of a crab means both the dactylus (movable, top) and the fixed finger (immobile, bottom); I think this should be clear, however, through basic context clues (we're talking about the pincer, everyone already knows "fingers" are those appendages on the tips of our hands, and we say "both"). What I've just given is the most barebones definition of what the fingers are, and so stopping to explain it would be a rhetorical brick wall. Likewise, a "rearward" tooth is simplified to the point where people using this as a serious resource now need to figure out what we mean by "rearward", reducing its value from "proximal" which is precisely understood.
  • The "Taxonomy" and "Diet" sections seem to be shorter and less specific than other sections (particularly the description section).
    • The 'Taxonomy' section is short because that really is the extent of relevant taxonomic information I could find on O. catharus. Wear & Haddon 1987, Davidson 1986, and Davidson 1987 (master's thesis) are the only sources that really cover the diet as original research (and Davidson 1986 is mostly very niche information about how it selects mussels; I'll re-read it and see if there's anything else worth including). I think we adequately cover the relevant information in Wear & Haddon 1987, and Davidson 1987 inherently has a ton of overlap with Davidson 1986. It never hurts to double-check, though, and so I'll also re-read Wear & Haddon 1987. The 'Description' section is so long simply because there's a lot of relevant information from a comparatively wide variety of sources.
Looking at Wear & Haddon 1987, you cover the very basics, but there are specific details in their that readers might enjoy learning, for example that the bivalves it eats are usually very small (< 3–4 mm), and that the gut often contains remains from more than 100 individual bivales, and similar details. Not absolutely necessary to include such things, but there would be potential to further expand that section. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Diet section contains some general statements that are already covered in much greater detail in the "Description" (maybe it is worth to move those discussions down to "Diet")?
    • The only statements that overlap between 'Description' and 'Diet' are six words casually mentioning what the claws are used for (lit. "used for cutting" and "used for crushing") and a sentence about how its stenothermism applies to its eating habits (which is relevant to its internal digestive anatomy). Sometimes these tiny nuggets of information inherently overlap in different sections. I think enforcing a strict dichotomy here only hurts the reading experience.
Ok.
  • Maybe rename the section to the more general "Feeding"?
    • I think 'Diet' is substantially more clearly understood, applicable, and widely used than 'Feeding'. I don't think it should be changed, but if it is, I think "Diet and foraging [behavior]" would be most appropriate.
Ok. I thought that "feeding" would be more inclusive, also covering feeding habits, while "diet" is only about the contents. But I'm fine with that. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Upon further consideration, I think I am happy going with 'Diet and foraging', since the second paragraph is explicitly about how they obtain the food rather than the food itself. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 01:01, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Here you address the species in plural, elsewhere you use singular. That should be consistent (I think the convention is to use singular when talking about the species).
    • Yeah, in hindsight, I kind of just used "vibes" to determine when it would be plural and when it would be singular (for example, trying to describe it as singular for an anatomical description but pluralistically as a population). I'll have a go at singularizing it. This is probably the biggest extant flaw with the article.
  • The "Taxonomy" should have a little bit on the classification of Ovalipes itself.
    • I thought about expanding this footnote out into the prose, but I didn't know if it'd be seen as too superfluous. I could expand it out, but I think a second opinion or a concrete argument is warranted here before changing it.
In other FAs, we usually provide a little bit about the family level for context. Maybe one general sentence about the family is something to think about. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also, it does not seem there is consensus that Ovalipes sits within Ovalipidae, as this study ([1]) proposes something else.
    • I think a single study contending that doesn't count as WP:DUE weight in what's already a minor explanatory footnote. This might later turn out to be correct, and it might deserve a mention in Ovalipidae, but all existing reliable sources I can find from 2018–2024 except this one by a single author place Ovalipes squarely within Ovalipidae (this includes WoRMS, extremely prolific carcinologists like G.C.B. Poore, S.T. Ahyong, and multiple peer-reviewed papers since Evans 2018). There's more than enough consensus for the purposes of the footnote, to my mind.
Ok if this is only a single opinion and the classification within Ovalipidae is still consensus. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • What is the "posterior border"? Doesn't that depend on posture?
    • The posterior border is the one facing the crab's cephalothorax if its chelipeds are parallel. However, while I know that from prior reading and can show that via several images such as this one, I feel replacing the terminology "posterior border" with something like this (which would itself sound bloated and awkward) strays too far into WP:OR.
OK.
  • "also uncommon" somehow implies they are uncommon in New Zealand.
    • I've made it clearer.
  • "a butterfly-shaped mark" – remove the link to "butterfly"? It does not help I think.
    • I can see it from the perspective of it being tangential; removed.
  • A bit confusing, needed to read several times.
    • I'm trying but completely failing to see the confusion.
Confusion is here: You talk about parasites, then in the next two sentences introduce a symbiont, and after that talk about parasites again. I think it would be better to keep both categories separated. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I see what you mean now. Similar to the carapace -> color -> carapace situation. I'll try to separate this out; I genuinely didn't see this. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 01:03, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • as a form of signalling – link to Animal communication?
  • Is "hairy" refering to setae, too, or are these different structures?
    • Nah, and I agree it could be clearer. I would say "hirsute" which technically flows better but is something 95% of readers would need to look up; I'll try workshopping this one, because even though I'm not sure what I could do better, it feels wrong.
I see. A wikilink seems to be missing. You could still just gloss it, e.g. "the antennae is somewhat hirsute ("hairy")" or similar. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suggest to switch the order. Discuss the color (including the white underside, too), and then the carapace shape, or vice versa, but not carapace -> color -> carapace -> color as it is currently.
    • Fantastic call, and I've done something similar: carapace shape -> color.
  • Can we add the etymology of "catharus".
Ok.
  • Maybe there is something more to add on the research history? Circumstances of the 1843 description maybe? For example, was the description based on life specimens, or based on a collected one (holotype collected where?)
    • If you take a look at p. 265 of the source, you'll note there unfortunately really isn't anything there that isn't already addressed better in Stephenson & Rees 1968; functionally the only unique things it says are that it's called the "common crab" (I could find no other sources on this) and that it was collected by Andrew Sinclair and sent to the British Museum (seems too extraneous to the taxonomy).
Information like that (collected by Andrew Sinclair and sent to the British Museum) is what we usually include in other FAs, and I personally find such information quite interesting, but I won't insist of course. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • but it may exhibit negative allometry in males – add "(grows more slowely)"
    • "Grows more slowly" is essentially correct, but this phrasing to me implies that the growth just "takes longer" but eventually catches up at some point. I've added in parentheses "grow proportionally smaller".
  • How many batches of eggs does a female produce per season?
    • My understanding of this is somewhat limited because I only corrected 'Mating and reproduction' rather than researching it fully, but the female is only inseminated once per season. Thus, the second section of 'Mating and reproduction' should apply here.
  • It would help to add a bit of context here; what does it mean to reverse the ventilatory flow, and why are they doing that?
    • Since the paper addresses it, I've added the presumed reason for the reversed direction, and I've added "reverse the direction" for clarity. However, explaining the breathing process to give an understanding of what ventilatory flow is is likely more suited to decapod anatomy. Similar to above, there's only so much we can do for a reader choosing to read about a species of crab's internal anatomy without sacrificing quality as a serious resource.
Perfect now. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • When O. punctatus is a synonym, why is that one still listed and appears as a separate species in the cladogram?
    • O. catharus and others were synonymised with O. punctatus, but that doesn't mean O. punctatus doesn't exist; it's just that O. catharus and others weren't identified as their own separate species from O. punctatus until 1968. You might be thinking of e.g. a junior synonym which completely obsoletes one of the taxa. It's the terminology Stephenson & Rees 1968 use, and I think it's the most elegant.
Per my comment above (Taxonomy is quite short), I personally think this is better spelled out. O. catharus was synonymised, by whom? When? And did subsequent publications simply not follow this synonymisation, or was the species re-established as a separate species at some point? Again, I am not insisting here if you really want to keep the taxonomy very short, but I found this synonymisation info a bit confusing without further context. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • the "relative" is redundant here, I propose to remove it.
    • I don't see this as redundant; the "relative length" is what's diminishing, and that's qualified with "compared to the length" (just "with respect to the length" but less verbose).
I thought you wouldn't loose anything if you just skip the first "relative"; e.g. "the length decreases relative to the width", but yeah, I guess your version works too. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I recommend to rephrase this in your own words; I don't see why this should be quoted.
    • I'm not sure this specific series of actions can be paraphrased without making it extraordinarily awkward, potentially inaccurate, less informative, or all three. If the article covered this ritual more, then I could probably formulate something, but right now, this is literally all the article gives on the choreography.
  • Also, if you quote, you would have to state the author of that quote in-text according to the WP guidelines, I believe.
    • Not true to my understanding per MOS:QUOTE. The direct inline citation is enough.
Ok.
  • "Hands"? Are these the pincers?
    • Pretty much certainly, as that's how I've always seem this terminology used. I just didn't want to overstep into WP:OR by accident, but I can change it (unlike "posterior border" above, this one is probably common and understandable enough that I can translate with minimal OR).
Yes, always use the same term when referring to the same thing, otherwise readers will assume that you are talking about something else. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Frequently but generally" confuses me.
    • Yeah, I think the "but" was corrupting the readability of that sentence. I've lightly altered it to significantly aid comprehension.
  • That does not belong under "Taxonomy" I think.
    • I was debating putting this in 'Description', 'Taxonomy', or splitting it between the two. I figured it was relevant to 'Taxonomy' because of the genetic isolation, but I agree in hindsight that it should be bumped up to the more relevant part about lifespans; done.
  • The following cladogram – It would help to date this (e.g., "from a 1998 study") and indicate on what it is based on (molecular data?).
    • The "from a 1998 study" is inherently part of the footnote system that we use. There's really nothing that stands out to me about this specific piece of information that makes that redundancy useful; that's generally reserved for exceptional claims predicated on a single source, and I don't think this is especially exceptional. If this is about the paper being 26 years old, no new species have been added since this was published, and I've seen no evidence that it's become outdated or superseded. Thus, I don't think we need to qualify it based on the date (and if we did, we probably ought to not be using it anyway). However, I agree with your second point, especially because it's based on morphological rather than molecular; fixed.
In other FAC discussions, "it's in the footnote citation so we don't have to include it in-text" has been a weak argument, as we don't want the reader to chase links for such information. I personally think that, especially for cladograms, which become outdated very quickly, the year does matter, especially as "1998" is quite old. Again, I won't insist since the point is minor. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Sexual cannibalism" is cannibalism between mating partners, right? But the text goes on to talk about cannibalism by other males, which is confusing.
    • We do talk about cannibalization by her partner, but I agree it's treated as an afterthought in the next sentence. I've flipped the sentence and hopefully fixed that.
  • The crabs are known to be a traditional food source – do we really need the "known to be" here?
    • I see where you're coming from, but I think this nicely complements the second half of the sentence which reads "but researchers in the early Colonial period did not record much about harvesting traditions" (i.e. "we know some basic things, but not a lot").
  • This section has much stuff that's not anatomy, including the paragraph on biochemistry.
    • I don't fully see eye-to-eye on this. The first paragraph is about its respiration and how it works morphologically, the second is about the heart and circulation, the third (which I guess by a strict definition of "anatomy" could prompt a change to "Internal biology" or "Physiology") is about the functioning of its heart, respiration, and digestion in response to temperature, and the fourth is about both its mechanism for hearing as well as poorly understood (but still present) internal structures which produce sound. I've renamed the subsection to "Physiology and internal anatomy" to be more accurate with respect to the third paragraph. I've also moved it to its own section since it being in 'Description' has kind of been nagging at me anyway.
OK. Note that in other FAs, we often group sections like "Diet" and "Predators" in a "Biology and Ecology" section, and "Physiology" tends to be part of that, rather than description. But ok. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • How females release their larvae should come later in the text, after the more general information, no?
    • Agreed, and I think it reads better this way too; changed.
  • What "group"? Are they gregarious?
    • I've changed this to "the females in an area" because I agree the source doesn't specifically define what a "group" here is except as the females in a specific area (I may have to check other sources to see if there's more information on that).
  • There is a huge box in the talk page ("The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future") – has this been resolved, can it be removed?
    • Please see one of the disclaimers of this nom. I put all of those there (this is the template {{refideas}}), and they're there because someone more clever or knowledgeable than me might be able to incorporate them without being extraneous, but I don't know how to do that. Good to have them around, in my opinion. If you've never used this template, I highly recommend it. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 02:10, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok.

Comments by Dudley

[edit]
  • "Ovalipes catharus has an oval-shaped, streamlined, and slightly grainy carapace with five large teeth to either side of the eyes and four teeth at the front.[1][14][20] The carapace has two large, maroon eye-spots at the rear". This is confusing. You start with the carapace, then go on to the eyes and teeth and go back to the carapace. I think you need to keep the carapace together and explain the eyes and teeth more clearly.
  • "It is overall sandy grey with orange-red highlights and dotted with small, brown spots.[1][23] Its underside is white, and its rear legs – which are flattened and function as swimming paddles – have a purplish tinge." This is unclear. The first "It" appears to refer to the carapace so grammatically so should "Its" in the second sentence, but it appears to be about the whole animal.
  • What is meant by "carapace teeth"?
  • "It has a long period of larval development – about two months". Long compared with what?
  • What is a megalopa? Is there an article you can link to?
  • "similarly to the otolith in vertebrates.[62] They are known to be able". "They" grammatically refers to vertebrates.
  • "Ovalipes catharus is colloquially known as the paddle crab, the common swimming crab,[7] or Māori: pāpaka.[8] They were described". You switch between singualr and plural. You should stick to one or the other.
  • More to follow. Dudley Miles (talk) 12:57, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't start with the carapace and then go to the eyes and teeth. The carapace itself forms these teeth, which are shapes, not implements used for eating (see below). The eyespots are markings on the carapace. "The carapace has two large, maroon eyespots..." Thus, the first two sentences focus exclusively on the overall shape and distinguishing features of the carapace, akin to describing a circular sawblade as: "a metal disc with teeth around the outer edge and with a logo in the center". I've since wikilinked to 'eyespots' to avoid any confusion, as while these are very common features in nature to a point where I don't think they warrant an aside, I absolutely should have linked from the get-go.
  • 1. Teeth of an animal normally means teeth in the literal sense, so I think you should add at first mention "(tooth-shaped projections)" to avoid confusion. 2. Are "eyes" in the first sentence eyes or eyespots? Dudley Miles (talk) 18:30, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Dudley Miles: Oooh, shoot, I'm sorry, I had a total brainfart and thought you were referring to how I went into detail about the eyespots in the second sentence, completely forgetting that I'd referenced the eyes in the first. (Nice to meet you; I'm stupid.) Yes, the eyes in the first sentence are the eyes themselves. However, I only use those as a frame of reference to where the teeth are for accessibility reasons (otherwise, I would use anterolateral). I think for 99% of readers, this gives a more intuitive description of the location, and for that 1% of researchers who can immediately intuit "anterolateral", "to either side of the eyes" doesn't meaningfully impact their experience (Wilkens & Ahyong, for example, describe them as "behind the eyes" (both descriptors are correct)). As for the teeth, "tooth-like projections" when I read it conjures a strong image of flattened human teeth, so I've just called them "sawtooth-like projections" instead. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 14:43, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Good call; fixed.
  • "Teeth" are used in the sense of the teeth of a sawblade. For the anteriolateral ones (the five to either side of the eyes), you can see them in the first image in the infobox (top-down) and in the third image of the crab's face (front-on). I don't think it would be WP:OR if I said "sawblade-like teeth" because it's unambiguously reminiscent of them, but I also don't know if that could alleviate confusion.
  • Long compared to other decapods; I've now specified, as yes, that was ambiguous. (Note this adjective isn't WP:OR; the authors writing a monograph on the life histories of Decapoda call the period "exceptionally long".)
  • I didn't initially wikilink because I have a strong aversion to double-dipping into a single wikilink in quick succession (same article, and the section Crustacean larva#Post-larva follows two sentences after Crustacean larva#Zoea), but I think you're correct that this is a suitable edge case; fixed.
  • Yeah, another case of singular versus plural (see below). However, this one is just unambiguously my fault because I didn't stick to my personal rule of 'singular no matter what for the description and anatomy'. Fixed.
  • Yup. I've been trying to think of what to do here, because sometimes I just have to talk about them as a population rather than as a singular entity. Sometimes it sounds natural to refer to them as singular, sometimes equally natural as plural. I kind of hate it. Haha TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 14:39, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "in deeper waters, up to at least 700 m". "down" not "up".
  • "Up to" doesn't imply "up" as in a positive direction on the vertical axis, but rather "up to" as in a limit (common English usage, arguably more common than the former). This would cause confusion with the prior sentence which uses "depths up to 100m", and I don't think it does that for any good reason (if anything, I think it reads less naturally and adds confusion). However, I changed the comma to an en-dash, since I think that reads more naturally in the context of a limit rather than a positive vertical distance.
  • "to swim rapidly and catch faster prey". faster than what? Maybe "fast prey".
  • Agreed; done.
  • Dimorphic is an unusual word which should be linked or explained.
  • I figured the part after the semicolon could function as a context clue, but now I see the situation where a reader just immediately gets hung up and goes to a dictionary before reading on. Done.
  • "O. catharus appears to be largely unaffected by parasites present in Charybdis japonica". Why should a predator's parasites be relevant? This should be clarified, perhaps by moving the last sentence in the paragraph, "Ecologists...tolerance" above the parasites comment.
  • This one's kind of difficult, because on the one hand, I want to keep the parasites and symbionts together, and rewriting it to accommodate for that would require flipping the entire paragraph in a way I don't think reads as naturally. I can say that Miller et al. spend an entire article documenting this, and C. japonica isn't just a predator: it's a pretty similar crab (it would be one of O. catharus' closest relatives in NZ), so it is at least of some note that its parasites are basically totally different. Not done yet, but I see your point, and I'll try flipping the paragraph and seeing if that's workable.
  • "which lasts between 12 and 36 hours and even up to four days". "occasionally up to four days" seems better to me.
  • Since Haddon 1994 says "generally 12 to 36", I agree this isn't WP:SYNTH. Done.
  • "In one batch, a female crab produces between 82,000 and 683,000 eggs, but like in other crabs, a proportion of these are lost to disease, egg failure, and predation." This is over-cautiously worded as any animal which produces 1000s of eggs loses the vast majority, not just other crabs and not just a proportion.
  • Absent specific information from an RS, I can't say without WP:OR how many of these are lost (Haddon 1994 refers to it as "a proportion", but of course it's the majority; no crab is successfully spawning 683,000 new crabs). However, I would argue the focus of this half of the sentence isn't on the specific amount that are lost as much as it is the means by which they're lost. It seems obvious that these three things happen, but that Haddon went out of his way to bring up this ostensibly "trivial" point in an article targeted at an expert audience makes me see it as worth including for a general one.
  • "The crabs are known to be a traditional food source, but researchers in the early Colonial period did not record much about harvesting traditions." This implies but does nat state that are no longer harvested. This should be clarified.
  • To me, this doesn't imply one way or the other if they're still harvested, but rather that the ways they were harvested weren't recorded. For example, we still make cookies, but absent contemporaneous documentation, the way these cookies were made in the 1700s may be lost. Unfortunately, this is the one resource in this entire article I have no access to. Prosperosity, who added this, only had temporary access via a rental. It isn't ideal, but I trust what they've written accurately reflects the source.
  • Did commercial catches decline because of over-fishing? If so, this should be explained. If not, the reason for the decline should be explained.
  • Unfortunately, I could find no established reason for the decline. The master's thesis 'Investigating the socio-economic impacts of the introduced Asian paddle crab, Charybdis japonica, on New Zealand's native paddle crab fishery' tries to explore this, but section '4.7 Conclusions' indicates not even the experts know. The 2023 fisheries assessment further states: "For all PAD fishstocks there is insufficient information to estimate current stock status." I will however add that "The cause of this drop is unknown as of blah blah" or "the cause of this decline is not well-understood" (I'm thinking the latter).
  • "In 1984, research was conducted into exporting to the United States, which had previously failed due to spoilage and lack of market interest." I am not sure that this is worth mentioning, but if it is covered then the results of the research should also be explained. Dudley Miles (talk) 14:33, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Unfortunately, I've been unable to find what actually came of this research. The closest I was able to find to Murray 1984 is a mention in Osborne 1987 that "a trial paddle crab farm began [...] with the aim of producing soft-shelled crabs for markets in the U.S.A." Of course the presumable answer is "it was unsuccessful" because I can't find any evidence the US imports these, but that's WP:OR. I mention it in a footnote because the fact they were previously imported to the US would be notable enough to include in the prose were I able to follow it up with what eventually happened to it, but absent that, I feel it's still worth mentioning, just outside of the main prose. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 15:38, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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