Category: entomology

That new beetle? Actually, it’s really an old beetle

Acanthophorus_serraticornis
Acanthophorus serraticornis via Wikimedia Commons.

A team of entomologists in India had to put their new species celebration on hold last year, when they found out their discovery had already been discovered.

The Journal of Insect Science paper, initially published in December 2012, was retracted in October 2013, after several entomologists confirmed that the beetle was actually a previously identified species called Acanthophorus serraticornis. (The notice has a November 2014 date, but we understand that’s because the journal switched servers.)

Here’s the notice for “A new record of longicorn beetle, Acanthophorus rugiceps, from India as a root borer on physic nut, Jatropha curcas, with a description of life stages, biology, and seasonal dynamics”: Continue reading That new beetle? Actually, it’s really an old beetle

Who moved my ants? Species confusion sinks paper on invasive species

Image via Wikimedia

“How many and which ant species are being accidentally moved around the world?,” published in 2013, has been retracted because the authors “used a wrong list of species and omitted to include a reference.”

The authors claim that this affected the magnitude of the issue, but not the overall conclusion.

The paper was written up by the press several times, including by the BBC, though according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, it hasn’t been cited.

Here is the notice: Continue reading Who moved my ants? Species confusion sinks paper on invasive species

Bee researcher in the Congo blames “injustice, segregation and colonialism” for retractions, Science correction

j insect conservationA bee researcher based in Congo has had two papers retracted, and a paper in Science corrected, for various reasons including unreliable data. The researcher, however, blames colonialism.

M. B. Théodore Munyuli is at the National Center for Research in Natural Sciences, CRSN-Lwiro, D.S. Bukavu, Kivu, and studies the distribution and diversity of bees. Here’s the notice from Psyche: A Journal of Entomology, for a paper on which Munyuli is the sole author: Continue reading Bee researcher in the Congo blames “injustice, segregation and colonialism” for retractions, Science correction

A retracted retraction? Authors salvage entomology paper with image issues

jtbThe paper is dead. Long live the paper!

Earlier this year, we brought you the case of a group of Brazilian insect researchers who lost two 15-year-old papers in different journals for duplication. One of those papers has been resurrected, albeit in a rather puzzling way.

The article, “Non-local interactions and the dynamics of dispersal in immature insects,” had appeared in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, which had issued the following retraction notice:
Continue reading A retracted retraction? Authors salvage entomology paper with image issues

Another correction appears for husband-wife team found to have manipulated images

insectAlejandra Bravo and Mario Soberon, a wife-husband research team at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) who received sanctions — later lifted — for manipulating images in a number of papers have corrected another article.

The paper, “The mitogen-activated protein kinase p38 is involved in insect defense against Cry toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis,” appeared in Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2010 and has been cited 23 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the correction notice: Continue reading Another correction appears for husband-wife team found to have manipulated images

Ants in the past: Journal pulls insect-global warming paper after questions arise over results

insectscicoverA group of ecologists in Germany who published a paper on the potential impact of global warming on ants in the Harz Mountains — northern Germany’s highest range — have retracted the paper after becoming, well, a bit antsy about the validity of their findings.

The article, “Diversity of ants across an altitudinal gradient in and outside a spruce forest in the Harz Mountains, Germany,” appeared in August 2012 in the journal Insect Science, a publication of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The last author of the paper was Christoph Scherber, of the University of Göttingen.

We found the abstract of the paper on this site: Continue reading Ants in the past: Journal pulls insect-global warming paper after questions arise over results

Dispute over data forces retraction of wasp paper

italinsectlogoAn article published in the Bulletin of the Italian Society of Entomology has been retracted in the wake of a squabble over the ownership of the data.

The 2012 paper, “A contribution to the Ichneumoninae fauna of Sicily (Hymenoptera Ichneumonidae,” was written by Matthias Riedel and Salvatore Tomarchio, and deals with the so-called ichneumon wasps (or flies), a family with some 60,000 member species worldwide and one that, as this Wikipedia entry notes, caught the particular attention of Charles Darwin: Continue reading Dispute over data forces retraction of wasp paper

Duplication forces retractions of two 15-year-old entomology papers

jtbA Brazilian entomologist, Claudio Jose von Zuben, has been forced to retract two papers from 1997 after editors became aware that he and his colleagues had used the same figure in both.

First, the notice from Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz: Continue reading Duplication forces retractions of two 15-year-old entomology papers

Parasitology plagiarists get retraction — and a publishing ban

A1_10905_Cover page 1Are plagiarists parasites? And what if they work in the field of parasitism — like M. Shafiq Ansari and colleagues at Aligarh Muslim University in India?

The Journal of Insect Behavior is retracting a 2011 paper by Ansari’s group, “Foraging of host-habitat and superparasitism in Cotesia glomerata: A gregarious parasitoid of Pieris brassicae,” for its similarity to a 2003 article on the same species by other researchers. The insect in question is a form of wasp that, in a case of life imitating Alien, lays its eggs in living caterpillars, which the little buggers eat from the inside out. (Turnabout apparently is fair play in this grisly interaction.)

Here’s the retraction notice (it’s a PDF): Continue reading Parasitology plagiarists get retraction — and a publishing ban