The logic to delete a publication deletes associated coverart title records but is then not checking to see if this is the last title record for the artist(s). This results in an orphaned "author" record(s) with no titles/publications listed.
You can replicate this by creating a publication record with a random artist's name and then deleting it. The artist's bibliographic page will still be present though will be empty.
Anonymous
Note that this bug may be related to Bug 3159084.
Diff:
Fixed in:
Installed in r2015-152 on 2015-10-09. Closing.