diff --git a/modules/Bio/EnsEMBL/BaseAlignFeature.pm b/modules/Bio/EnsEMBL/BaseAlignFeature.pm
index a6be1f65efbbec2c9d63c179fc943d85dd92a2da..ddc8da91ae227f77f2097e1aad37bc51ac6b6bfd 100644
--- a/modules/Bio/EnsEMBL/BaseAlignFeature.pm
+++ b/modules/Bio/EnsEMBL/BaseAlignFeature.pm
@@ -678,7 +678,7 @@ sub _parse_ensembl_features {
 
   if (ref($features) ne "ARRAY") {
     throw("features must be an array reference not a [".ref($features)."]");
-  } elsif (scalar(@$features) <= 0) {
+  } elsif (scalar(@$features) == 0) {
     throw("features array must not be empty");
   }