Taxonomic bias in biodiversity data and societal preferences

Abstract Studying and protecting each and every living species on Earth is a major challenge of the 21st century. Yet, most species remain unknown or unstudied, while others attract most of the public, scientific and government attention. Although known to be detrimental, this taxonomic bias continu...

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Autores principales:	Julien Troudet, Philippe Grandcolas, Amandine Blin, Régine Vignes-Lebbe, Frédéric Legendre
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2017
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/a1528799304e48c8b9f3b9119702456a
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:a1528799304e48c8b9f3b9119702456a2021-12-02T16:06:49ZTaxonomic bias in biodiversity data and societal preferences10.1038/s41598-017-09084-62045-2322https://doaj.org/article/a1528799304e48c8b9f3b9119702456a2017-08-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-09084-6https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract Studying and protecting each and every living species on Earth is a major challenge of the 21st century. Yet, most species remain unknown or unstudied, while others attract most of the public, scientific and government attention. Although known to be detrimental, this taxonomic bias continues to be pervasive in the scientific literature, but is still poorly studied and understood. Here, we used 626 million occurrences from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the biggest biodiversity data portal, to characterize the taxonomic bias in biodiversity data. We also investigated how societal preferences and taxonomic research relate to biodiversity data gathering. For each species belonging to 24 taxonomic classes, we used the number of publications from Web of Science and the number of web pages from Bing searches to approximate research activity and societal preferences. Our results show that societal preferences, rather than research activity, strongly correlate with taxonomic bias, which lead us to assert that scientists should advertise less charismatic species and develop societal initiatives (e.g. citizen science) that specifically target neglected organisms. Ensuring that biodiversity is representatively sampled while this is still possible is an urgent prerequisite for achieving efficient conservation plans and a global understanding of our surrounding environment.Julien TroudetPhilippe GrandcolasAmandine BlinRégine Vignes-LebbeFrédéric LegendreNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 7, Iss 1, Pp 1-14 (2017)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Julien Troudet Philippe Grandcolas Amandine Blin Régine Vignes-Lebbe Frédéric Legendre Taxonomic bias in biodiversity data and societal preferences
description	Abstract Studying and protecting each and every living species on Earth is a major challenge of the 21st century. Yet, most species remain unknown or unstudied, while others attract most of the public, scientific and government attention. Although known to be detrimental, this taxonomic bias continues to be pervasive in the scientific literature, but is still poorly studied and understood. Here, we used 626 million occurrences from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the biggest biodiversity data portal, to characterize the taxonomic bias in biodiversity data. We also investigated how societal preferences and taxonomic research relate to biodiversity data gathering. For each species belonging to 24 taxonomic classes, we used the number of publications from Web of Science and the number of web pages from Bing searches to approximate research activity and societal preferences. Our results show that societal preferences, rather than research activity, strongly correlate with taxonomic bias, which lead us to assert that scientists should advertise less charismatic species and develop societal initiatives (e.g. citizen science) that specifically target neglected organisms. Ensuring that biodiversity is representatively sampled while this is still possible is an urgent prerequisite for achieving efficient conservation plans and a global understanding of our surrounding environment.
format	article
author	Julien Troudet Philippe Grandcolas Amandine Blin Régine Vignes-Lebbe Frédéric Legendre
author_facet	Julien Troudet Philippe Grandcolas Amandine Blin Régine Vignes-Lebbe Frédéric Legendre
author_sort	Julien Troudet
title	Taxonomic bias in biodiversity data and societal preferences
title_short	Taxonomic bias in biodiversity data and societal preferences
title_full	Taxonomic bias in biodiversity data and societal preferences
title_fullStr	Taxonomic bias in biodiversity data and societal preferences
title_full_unstemmed	Taxonomic bias in biodiversity data and societal preferences
title_sort	taxonomic bias in biodiversity data and societal preferences
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2017
url	https://doaj.org/article/a1528799304e48c8b9f3b9119702456a
work_keys_str_mv	AT julientroudet taxonomicbiasinbiodiversitydataandsocietalpreferences AT philippegrandcolas taxonomicbiasinbiodiversitydataandsocietalpreferences AT amandineblin taxonomicbiasinbiodiversitydataandsocietalpreferences AT reginevigneslebbe taxonomicbiasinbiodiversitydataandsocietalpreferences AT fredericlegendre taxonomicbiasinbiodiversitydataandsocietalpreferences
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Taxonomic bias in biodiversity data and societal preferences

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