Notice of RetractionHeavy Metal Concentrations in Nestlings of Black-Crowned Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) in Zhengzhou, China

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

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To assess the heavy metal accumulation level, distribution among tissues or organs, and gender related variations, concentrations of five heavy metal elements were examined in six tissues or organs of 10 nestlings of Black-crowned Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) collected from urban district of Zhengzhou, China. Hg was found in all six tissues or organs and As in the muscle, heart, kidney and toe. The highest concentration of Hg reached 0.7054 μg/g in the liver and As reached 0.7657 μg/g in the kidney. Both concentrations of Hg in kidneys and As in feathers were higher significantly in males than that in females separately. The levels of As in resident birds were higher significantly than that in migrator herons in feathers. Results indicated that five heavy metals concentrations measured in this study of Black-crowned Night Herons in Zhengzhou were relatively low and below the toxic levels.