Laskowski KL, Pruitt JN. Evidence of social niche construction: persistent and repeated social interactions generate stronger personalities in a social spider. Proc. R. Soc. B 281, 20133166 (published online 22 May 2014). (doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.3166)
The first author of the paper by Laskowski & Pruitt, ‘Evidence of social niche construction: persistent and repeated social interactions generate stronger personalities in a social spider’, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, recently scrutinized the raw data associated with the paper, after being made aware of problems in the raw data of a related follow-up study. The data were collected in the laboratory of the last author. The first author found duplicated values in the raw data that were concentrated in two treatment groups. The presence of these duplications cannot be adequately explained nor corrected, and if removed, the finding that increasing familiarity increases individual behavioural variation disappears. As such, results drawn from these data cannot be considered reliable, and the authors therefore wish to retract the paper in question.