Talk:Cockchafer/GA2

GA review

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Nominator: Sddarealone (talk · contribs) 14:21, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 10:05, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Comments

• "alongside Melolontha hippocastani (the forest cockchafer)" - can't see any good reason to pick out this species in the lead. Reply - Hard disagree; M. hippocastani and M. melolontha are broadly located near to each other (one in forests and the other in fields) but for breeding both species females migrate to forests. Both also have low genetic differentiation which makes them very closely related. In fact, multiple research works compared M. hippocastani and M. melolontha side by side.
  • OK, then you need to point out that fact, and the reason for comparing the two species.

• "when they are fed on by females" - remove "by females", this is unconditional.  Done

• "Similar animal trials also occurred for many other animals in the Middle Ages." - remove as off-topic, not about Cockchafers.  Done

• I've done some very small copy-editing.

• The list of synonyms is too long for the infobox/sidebar. Suggest you collapse the list. One thing that would help a bit, too, would be to remove the (supposed) subspecies of M. vulgaris as these don't represent attempts to create a new species, i.e. all the M. vulgaris XYZ subspecies of Papp, Kraatz, and Westhoff add up only to M. vulgaris which needs to be mentioned only once (Fabricius 1775).  Done

• The taxonomic history (as implied by the infobox) is missing from the article. At least the key points (Linnaeus's 1758 formal description of the species, Fabricius 1775, Moll 1785, Westhoff 1884, and Papp 1943's attempts all need to be mentioned and cited in the text, in a "Taxonomic history" section.

• There needs to be at least a brief mention of the current taxonomy, i.e. that Melolontha is in the Melolonthini, a tribe of the Scarabeidae family, cited to a suitable source. The primary source is Leach 1819 but we should have something more recent (and secondary) as well. Partly done; can you check if this source can be used to cite the tribe of M. melolontha?

• Why is Bacillus thuringiensis named as "B. T. japonensis"? The name does not occur in the linked article.  Done; it's a subspecies of Bacillus thuringiensis.

• There is a substantial amount of clutter, in the form of claims that are true of all insects (6 legs) and some that are true probably of all bilaterian animals (absorb glucose in the midgut).  Done

• Similarly, "It has been shown that proteolytic breakdown of toxins is a common resistance mechanism for agricultural pests.[19]" is visibly a claim for pests-in-general, not for cockchafers specifically, so it's off-topic here. Another example is "Along with maxillary and labial palps, these antennae consist of structures like sensilla that helps the grub to perform its olfactory and contact chemosensory functions": well yes, as in all insects (I've edited that one). We should remove all such "noise" and focus on cockchafer-specific biology, so please read through the whole text and cut the text down to that.

• No need to introduce rare and never-reused redlinked term "homoacetogenic": too technical for the general reader.  Done

• The section "History of pest control" is extremely long in the context of the article's size: 900 words out of 3400 (including the lead). It's also in a sense peripheral, as it's logically part of the "Relationship with humans" chapter, even though it's not positioned there at the moment. That means we have over a quarter of the text for what I'd call a subsection (7. Relationship with humans; 7.1 History of pest control), which is well into WP:COATRACK territory. In addition, quite a lot of the section's text is off-topic, e.g. "Since the 1970s, agriculture has generally reduced its use of pesticides. Because of environmental and public health concerns (pesticides may enter the food chain and thus also the human body) many chemical pesticides have been phased out in the European Union and worldwide.[34]" does not belong in the article. Equally, comments like "This gave rise to events that seem bizarre from a modern perspective." are not about cockchafers, nor really about pest control either, so we'd be better without such things. One solution would be to split the whole section out as a new article, and replace it here with a short summary and "main" link to the new article. Another option would be to cut down the section radically and move it to become a short subsection of "Relationship with humans". Partly done Did the copyedits for keeping the context M. melolontha specific. Also if I merge this Cockchafer § History of pest control section into Cockchafer § Relationship with humans section, 1. the latter would become too large and 2. I would need to decide on the section names also. Should I proceed with the change?

• The section "Intestinal components and microbiome" at 400 words is nearly 1/8 of the article's text. It is placed as a subsection of "Description", a chapter normally reserved for the physical appearance of an organism, or at least on key identifying features. This section, in contrast, goes into full coatrack mode ("Proteolytic activity of enzymes in the midgut is hypothesised to increase resistance to entomopathogenic bacteria") which isn't a plain description in any sense, but speculation, which is indeed the apparent purpose of the whole of the second paragraph. I suggest that the entire section be cut down to the basic facts of the microbiome (gut bugs enable the beetle to digest plant materials) and moved to become a short subsection of the Ecology chapter.  Done; I kept the important points while making it as a subsection.

• I've marked a citation needed tag in Etymology. The last sentence "The generic name "Melolontha" originates from ancient Greek, meaning "fig-sheep", because it actively feeds on wild figs." is a close paraphrase from the cited source.

 Done; I put the CLOP sentence within double quotes.

• • Sorry but I'm not convinced that is an adequate response here, as the etymology is at best disputed (and there's no known association with figs, either). Ancient Greek mēlon is the familar word for "apple"; more loosely and by extension, it could also be used to mean "fruit", but it does not mean "fig"; and óllymi means to destroy, so "fruit-destroyer" would be the plain sense. We cannot therefore just quote the fig-sheep theory directly; at best, we could say that H. Frisk proposed it, but it absolutely must not be in Wiki-voice, nor can it be presented as the one and only theory, when it's a hypothesis based on a conjecture about vowel changes and word reduction. We need the plain etymology first, and (perhaps) the fig-sheep thing second.

@Chiswick Chap: Ok I get what you're saying. There are only two options that would work here then: either removing the sentence or using this context I found on wiktionary and keeping the peer reviewed citation as the source. Which one should I choose? Sddarealone (talk) 11:12, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

We can't cite Wiktionary as such, though if it has used a reliable source we can cite that. Wiktionary's entry for Ancient Greek μηλολόνθη provides two dictionary sources which support the derivation from μηλολόνθη, so we can cite them for that.

The same page also briefly mentions both candidate etymologies but does not cite them. Your existing source is not written by linguists: the scientists involved are plainly not very interested in etymology, and could have picked up the passing mention of the Greek from Facebook or a wiki, so it's not really usable. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:52, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Alright, I found the source here for the Ancient Greek name of the cockchafer. The only problem is it translates to French as "hanneton, sorte de scarabée doré" which means cockchafer, a type of golden beetle. The other source gives just one word translation for the Ancient Greek word. Can I use the Greek to French source? Sddarealone (talk) 13:25, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:19, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

 Done Sddarealone (talk) 14:49, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Images

• All images are on Commons and are plausibly licensed.

• I've formatted some images to the default size, avoiding pixel dimensions.

• Why is there an image of "a group of cockchafers in Ukraine" in the "Relationship with humans" chapter?  Done; removed

• Why are the Male, Female, and Larva images in 3 different sections? Suggest a small gallery at the end of "Description" for all 3 of them.  Done; I added one more image to the gallery.

• Commons has good images of the larva in cocoon (File:Engerling in cocon (Melolontha melolontha).jpg) and of the Pupa (File:Meikever pop zijkant (Melolontha melolontha).jpg), which we ought to include in the Description gallery.  Done

Sources

• Please rename all refs of the form ":0", ":1" etc to something more maintainable, like "Fraval 1998" (with space and quotation marks).

• I have tagged an uncited claim as citation needed.  Done; removed–I never found a reliable source to support this claim.

• Spot-checks: all the sources I've checked seem to verify the claims made, with the following caveats:

[2] Marren Mabey is missing page number.

[3] EB: We can cite EB (in desperation) but as it's a tertiary source like Wikipedia it's not ideal. Best we find a secondary source instead.

[6] Reinecke 2002 is an oddly-specific source for several of the claims it's used for: it's about alcoholism in cockchafers, not about their general biology. Best use other sources; since the instances it's used for are already cited to another source, we could just drop it.

[9] Fraval is a dead link (just goes to INRA home page), needs archive and probably other parameters.

[31] is lacking website/publisher. It's also a dead link, needs an archive.

[32] What is "De Geer"? Could be a multi-volume book or journal article, but title is missing and author's name is incomplete, other parameters unclear or unspecified.

[38] Martin is missing the publisher and page number.

[39] is missing the page number.

[41] is missing the chapter or page numbers (either would do).

Summary

• OK, first pass completed. This article is in a reasonable state as far as sources and images are concerned, but the text seems to have suffered additions (by students?) which appear as coatracks (on side issues) rather than key components of the article. These need to be cut down or moved out. The other items are basically minor and should be quickly fixable. There is nothing in the article about taxonomy and phylogeny/evolution, so some sort of addition here appears essential. When those changes have been made I will rescan the article. Let me know here (or ping me). Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:09, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

  @Chiswick Chap Thanks for your in-depth and a well rounded first review. You seem to be an entomologist as your eye for catching mistakes in these kind of articles is very sharp. I knew the text had issues because of the AI generated additions that started from here but never expected it to be this much. I tried cleanup to my level best (with my limited knowledge of insects) but from your issues raised, it seems that it didn't go as planned.

  To make all of the fixes, I need some time as some of the edits suggested are very large for which I need to look at it carefully. If this article gets passed which I hope, this will be my first AI cleanup to GA-class article which is nothing short of a milestone. Again thanks for not quick-failing this review and proceeding with it, Chiswick Chap :) Sddarealone (talk) 13:41, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

  Many thanks. Just an evolutionary biologist... There's no specific hurry as long as you're actively working on it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:50, 5 August 2026 (UTC)