'Ataris Pallidipennis Stal': Rare Bug, Misspelled, Spreads on Web

Aug. 31, 2009 — -- "Ataris Pallidipennis Stal." Somehow, this term became the most-searched term on Google Trends this morning, although there was almost no information to be found on it.

It turns out to be an insect -- a rare and probably harmless bug from South Africa -- that was found in a shipment of cut flowers from South Africa and stopped at Miami International Airport 10 days ago. Its real scientific name is Uttaris pallidipennis Stal -- note the spelling difference -- and a single bug was found by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

"They fumigated it and the shipment went on," said Jose Castellano of the Customs Service.

He said the agency made the find Aug. 20 (they find insects in flower shipments all the time). "It really isn't something to be concerned about," he said, "though you can't really tell for sure until it's out in a place where it's not a native species."

This may tell us more about the spread of information around the Web than the spread of insects around the world. Search for "Ataris Pallidipennis Stal" on Google and you'll find a lot of references by bloggers, mystified why it became a hot search term.

How does such a spelling error become so widespread?

"This is not uncommon," said Google in a statement from R.J. Pittman, its director of product management. "Often we see common misspellings appear and even multiple variations of misspellings appear in rising search trends. This is particularly true for names, places and things that are either difficult to spell, or often have multiple correct spellings."

And -- a caution here -- a search for the misspelled version may not tell you much about the real bug, but you may find plenty of computer bugs if you look in the wrong places. There are Web sites that post Google's rising searches in order to send malware to searchers' machines. And just to complicate things, "Ataris" is awfully close to "Atari," as in the video game company. (There's also a punk rock band called the Ataris.)

Scientists at the University of Florida's Tropical Research and Education Center in Homestead said, at first, the bug was so rare they had never heard of it.

"There are only a couple of people in the world who work on this," said Prof. Waldemar Klassen, who did some research and found that similar species are believed to feed on grass seeds -- although, never having seen this particular species, biologists are not sure what kinds of grass it might like if it got loose in the United States.