A detailed story of the moving larvae …

In our earlier post, we found that same larvae has been planned to move for another photograph. close examination of the photographs reveals that only a single photograph has been taken and second photograph has been used as cropped version.

We mailed author  to explain this incidence, but did not get any replies. Hence we are providing a link to the article. http://10.1016/j.jinsphys.2008.12.005

In the article, author aimed to Silence acetylcholinesterase gene of Helicoverpa armigera by feeding siRNA supplemented in an artificial diet and reports that siRNA affects the larval growth and its life cycle.

As we mentioned earlier, first photograph is to check the lethal dose of AChE-siRNA on larval growth.  Three different concentrations 25nM, 37.5nM and 50nM concentration of siRNA were used to fed larvae and 50nM concentration has been found as the severe dose where larvae growth stops at first Instar stage.

Second photograph is to check the recovery of the instars after withdrawing the siRNA dosage from the diet.

For such experiments, we have to put the larvae on a diet in a jar where diet is supplemented with the siRNA. To measures the growth parameters we take larvae out of those jars and place on some surface to measure the sizes against a scale.  While doing this it is obvious that larvae will be placed on different surface and their position changes to detectable levels. But here it is clear that no such experimentation has been done for the recovery experiment and same photograph has been used to show that larvae has recovered.

Beside it, author shows his intelligence by changing the scale bar from 5mm to 1cm to corroborate well with the recovery statement. With changing the scale bar, same larvae turns out to be of different sizes in two photographs.

Your comments are welcome. 

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