Caldwell, Iain R., Hobbs, Jean-Paul A., Bowen, Brian W., Cowman, Peter F., Dibattista, Joseph D., Whitney, Jon L., Ahti, Pauliina A., Belderok, Roy, Canfield, Sean, Coleman, Richard R., Iacchei, Matthew, Johnston, Erika C., Knapp, Ingrid, Nalley, Eileen M., Staeudle, Timo M., and Láruson, Áki Jarl (2024) Global trends and biases in biodiversity conservation research. Cell Reports Sustainability, 1. 100082.

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Abstract

Efforts to conserve biodiversity have been hampered by long-standing biases, including a disproportionate focus on particular taxa and ecosystems with minimal attention to underlying genetic diversity. We assessed whether these biases have persisted over the past four decades by analyzing trends in 17,502 research articles published in four top conservation-focused journals. Overall, we found that historical biases in conservation biology research remain entrenched. Despite increasing numbers of conservation articles published each decade from 1980 to 2020, research effort has increasingly focused on the same suite of taxa. Surprisingly, some of the most-studied species in these conservation articles had low conservation risk, including several domesticated animals. Animals and terrestrial ecosystems are consistently over-represented while plants, fungi, and freshwater ecosystems remain under-represented. Strategically funding investigations of understudied species and ecosystems will ensure more effective conservation effort across multiple levels of biodiversity, alleviate impediments to biodiversity targets, and ultimately prevent further extinctions.

Item ID:	85888
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2949-7906
Copyright Information:	© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. 1 This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Date Deposited:	18 Jun 2025 02:27
FoR Codes:	41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410401 Conservation and biodiversity @ 100%
SEO Codes:	19 ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATURAL HAZARDS > 1902 Environmental policy, legislation and standards > 190299 Environmental policy, legislation and standards not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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