The Art of Science: The Shimmering Insects of Jennifer Angus

Jennifer Angus, Insecta Fantasia

Jennifer Angus, Insecta Fantasia

Bugs crawling up the walls are the stuff of nightmares for many, but they become stunning art in the hands of Jennifer Angus. A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Angus has for years used real, dead insects as her primary artistic medium. Her compositions, which are usually pinned to gallery walls, often refer to Victorian decorative motifs, which in turn recall the insect-collecting habits of 19th century naturalists.

Like them, she gathers her insects from around the world, particularly Thailand and Malaysia. While she notes that none of the insects she uses in her work are endangered species, she hopes that her art will spur an interest in both entomology and rainforest preservation in her audience. The eye-popping colors of her artwork are all natural, she says – she does not enhance the insects with paints or dyes. Angus’ work is on exhibit at the Jack Olson Gallery at Northern Illinois University through February 28, and you can see more on her website.

Photo via Wired.com


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:

The article “Diffusion Model Applied to Postfeeding Larval Dispersal in Blowflies (Diptera: Calliphoridae)” published in Memorias do Instituto do Oswaldo Cruz 92(2):281-286, 1997, dx.doi.org/10.1590, authored by RC Bassanezi, MBF Leite, WAC Godoy, CJ Von Zuben, FJ Von Zuben, and SF dos Reis has been retracted. We have been informed about the use of graphical figure presentation published in Journal of Theoretical Biology vol. 185(4):523-531  1997, and following a careful analysis of the content in both papers, we concluded that the figure presented in Mem. Inst. Oswaldo Cruz 92(2):281-286, 1997 constitutes plagiarism. Consequently, we decided to retract this paper.

Adeilton Alves Brandão,
Editor de Publicação

And here’s the notice from the Journal of Theoretical Biology:

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editors-in-Chief.

The article is a duplicate of a paper that has already been published in Mem. Inst. Oswaldo Cruz, 92 (1997) 281-286, http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0074-02761997000200025 as well as J. Appl. Entomol., 120 (1996) 379-382, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0418.1996.tb01623.x.

One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that the paper is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. As such this article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.

The duplication was apparently first reported on the now-shuttered Science Fraud site. Here’s a screen capture of the post. The JTB paper has been cited 15 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, while the Oswaldo Cruz study has been cited 8 times.

Von Zuben is a professor at UNESP and a founder of the Brazilian Association of Forensic Entomology. He was also an author of a paper retracted in 2011, and of another that was slated to be retracted but was eventually just subjected to an Expression of Concern. In July 2011, he wrote a letter to the Ciencia Brasil blog questioning those who were critical of his work.


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):

The Journal of Insect Behavior was notified in December 2012 of the possibility of plagiarism in “Foraging of host-habitat and superparasitism in Cotesia glomerata: A gregarious parasitoid of Pieris brassicae”; Fazil Hasan, M. Shafiq Ansari and Nadeem Ahmad, Journal of Insect Behavior, Vol. 24: 363–379. After careful review, the Co-Editors determined that article did include significant plagiarism of “Superparasitism in Cotesia glomerata: response of hosts and consequences for parasitoids,” Hainan Gu, Qun Wang and Silvia Dorn, Ecol. Entomol. 2003,Vol. 28: 422–431. Consequentially, the Journal of Insect Behavior retracts the article and will not consider for publication future submissions by the offending authors.

The paper has not been cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Ansari and Hasan are co-authors of a 2012 textbook about C. glomerata. Here’s what the authors’ note has to say about them:

Mr. Fazil Hasan is pursuing his Ph.D under the able guidance of Dr. M. Shafiq Ansari. His major area of interest is agricultural entomology. Dr. Ansari is Assoc. Prof. of Entomology in Aligarh Muslim University, India. He has publications in reputed journals. He is leading entomologist sharing his knowledge in teaching and guiding Ph.D students.

We wonder if all of the material in that book is their own. If not, and a retraction is in order, it wouldn’t be the first such case we’ve covered involving suspect entomology.