Molecular Ecology Group (MEG), Water Research Institute (CNR-IRSA), National Research Council, Verbania, Italy; Laboratory for Integrative Biodiversity Research (LIBRe), Finnish Museum of Natural History (LUOMUS), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; National Biodiversity Future Center, Palermo, Italy
Molecular Ecology Group (MEG), Water Research Institute (CNR-IRSA), National Research Council, Verbania, Italy; National Biodiversity Future Center, Palermo, Italy
Department of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid, Spain
Ricardo A Correia
Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Conservation Science (HELICS), Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; CESAM – Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal; Biodiversity Unit, University of Turku, 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.
