Abstract
Workers of the red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta are repeatedly claimed in the literature not to have ovaries. Here, we demonstrate that we cannot find a source publication that proves the statement, and we show how publications are erroneously citing this statement. To remedy this gap, we dissected 87 S. invicta workers over a range of worker sizes, and demonstrate that S. invicta workers do not have reproductive organs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time such a demonstration has been published in the scientific literature. We flag that the same issue of a lack of published evidence for the same statement likely exists for many other species and genera, precluding the ability for appropriate referencing of such details.