Out of sight, out of mind: public and research interest in insects is negatively correlated with their conservation status

Abstract

Conservation ‘culturomics’ analyses changes in word frequencies within large digital sources to gain conservation insights. Studies of mammals and birds have found little correlation between conservation need and research effort or popular interest. In this study, we examine research and public interest in 9355 potentially endangered insect species from the Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. Using search counts from Google search, Google Scholar and Ngram as indicators of public and research interest (Internet salience), we found that Internet attention is negatively correlated with the level of threat faced by an insect species. All measures of Internet salience and research effort were highly correlated, and searches for an insect's scientific name were more likely if it had a common name. Since few past studies have incorporated phylogenetic information into their analyses, we used search counts and Twitter text content to study the phylogenetic signal of research interest across 870 insect families. Phylogenetic regressions demonstrate that species‐rich families receive more searches, but research interest is not proportional to the size of a family. Phylogenetically distinct insect families receive fewer searches per family and per species. Our results suggest that many endangered insects, unlike vertebrates, have been largely ignored on the World Wide Web.

Korean endemic species no more: on the occurrence of Pelophylax chosenicus in China

“…Resolving the distribution of species is a key requirement to understand their diversity and behavioural ecology, but also the threats they face (Manne and Pimm 2001; Richardson and Whittaker 2010). Historically, conducting field surveys was one of the first research efforts to study biodiversity (Wallace 1876), and determining the occurrence of species is needed to understand and protect biodiversity (Wang et al 2021). Occurrence surveys are generally based on field surveys, automated monitoring, surveys via citizen science, and literature reviews (Fletcher Jr et al 2019).…”

Predicting population trends of birds worldwide with big data and machine learning

“…insects), yet their roles in the ecosystem are no smaller than the charismatic megafauna humans are naturally drawn to focus on; hence a conundrum for conservation biologists (Fisher 2019, Wang et al . 2021). Our study demonstrates that big data combined with machine learning could be used to help address our lack of knowledge about population trends for some species.…”

Proxy variables of the closeness between humans and wildlife that associate with the public interest in bird species in Japan

“…For example, Correia et al (2016) found that familiarity (human population within the range of a species) is the most important factor for internet saliency in Brazilian birds; and Schuetz et al (2015) reported that, in the USA, people are more interested in species with high estimates of bird population densities. In addition, conservation status is negatively related to public interest in species, which suggests that low population size and lack of opportunities for observation could be factors (Correia et al 2016;Wang et al 2021). However, these variables are highly abstract as proxies for the distance between human society and wildlife, requiring a search for more practical variables.…”