| Abstract | Knowledge of biodiversity is unevenly distributed across the Tree of Life. In the long run, such disparity in awareness unbalances our understanding of life on Earth, influencing policy decisions and the allocation of research and conservation funding. We investigated how humans accumulate knowledge of biodiversity by searching for consistent relationships between scientific (number of publications) and societal (number of views in Wikipedia) interest, and species-level morphological, ecological, and sociocultural factors. Across a random selection of 3019 species spanning 29 Phyla/Divisions, we show that sociocultural factors are the most important correlates of scientific and societal interest in biodiversity, including the fact that a species is useful or harmful to humans, has a common name, and is listed in the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. Furthermore, large-bodied, broadly distributed, and taxonomically unique species receive more scientific and societal attention, whereas colorfulness and phylogenetic proximity to humans correlate exclusively with societal attention. These results highlight a favoritism toward limited branches of the Tree of Life, and that scientific and societal priorities in biodiversity research broadly align. This suggests that we may be missing out on key species in our research and conservation agenda simply because they are not on our cultural radar. |
| Authors | Stefano Mammola, Martino Adamo, Dragan Anti?, Jacopo Calevo, Tommaso Cancellario, Pedro Cardoso, Dan Chamberlain, Matteo Chialva, Furkan Durucan, Diego Fontaneto, Duarte Goncalves, Alejandro Martínez, Luca Santini, Iñigo Rubio-Lopez, Ronaldo Sousa, David Villegas-Rios, Aida Verdes, Ricardo A Correia |
| Text | 487598 2023 10.7554/eLife.88251.3 tree of life Drivers of species knowledge across the tree of life Stefano Mammola, Martino Adamo, Dragan Anti , Jacopo Calevo, Tommaso Cancellario, Pedro Cardoso, Dan Chamberlain, Matteo Chialva, Furkan Durucan, Diego Fontaneto, Duarte Goncalves, Alejandro Martinez, Luca Santini, Iñigo Rubio Lopez, Ronaldo Sousa, David Villegas Rios, Aida Verdes, Ricardo A Correia Molecular Ecology Group MEG , Water Research Institute CNR IRSA , National Research Council, Italy; Laboratory for Integrative Biodiversity Research LIBRe , Finnish Museum of Natural History LUOMUS , University of Helsinki, Finland; National Biodiversity Future Center, Italy; Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Turin, Italy; University of Belgrade Faculty of Biology, Serbia; Royal Botanic Gardens, United Kingdom; School of Molecular and Life Sciences, Curtin University, Australia; Department of Aquaculture, Isparta University of Applied Sciences, Turkey; CIIMAR, Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research, University of Porto, Portugal; Department of Biology and Biotechnologies Charles Darwin , Sapienza University of Rome, Italy; CBMA Centre of Molecular and Environmental Biology, Department of Biology, University of Minho, Portugal; Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas, CSIC, Eduardo Cabello, Spain; Department of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Spain; Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Conservation Science HELICS , Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Finland; Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science HELSUS , University of Helsinki, Finland; CESAM Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, University of Aveiro, Portugal; Biodiversity Unit, University of Turku, Finland Knowledge of biodiversity is unevenly distributed across the Tree of Life. In the long run, such disparity in awareness unbalances our understanding of life on Earth, influencing policy decisions and the allocation of research and conservation funding. We investigated how humans accumulate knowledge of biodiversity by searching for consistent relationships between scientific number of publications and societal number of views in Wikipedia interest, and species level morphological, ecological, and sociocultural factors. Across a random selection of 3019 species spanning 29 Phyla/Divisions, we show that sociocultural factors are the most important correlates of scientific and societal interest in biodiversity, including the fact that a species is useful or harmful to humans, has a common name, and is listed in the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. Furthermore, large bodied, broadly distributed, and taxonomically unique species receive more scientific and societal attention, whereas colorfulness and phylogenetic proximity to humans correlate exclusively with societal attention. These results highlight a favoritism toward limited branches of the Tree of Life, and that scientific and societal priorities in biodiversity research broadly align. This suggests that we may be missing out on key species in our research and conservation agenda simply because they are not on our cultural radar. 12 Published version https //elifesciences.org/articles/88251 mam 2023_eLife_Mammola et al.pdf Articolo in rivista eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2050 084X eLife eLife diego.fontaneto FONTANETO DIEGO stefano.mammola MAMMOLA STEFANO alejandro.martinezgarcia MARTINEZ GARCIA ALEJANDRO PRR.AP005.006.001 NBFC_SPOKE3_ ASSESSING AND MONITORING TERRESTRIAL AND FRESHWATER BIODIVERSITY AND ITS EVOLUTION FROM TAXONOMY TO GENOMICS AND CITIZEN SCIENCE_IRSA |
