The good, the bad, and the ugly: which Australian terrestrial mammal species attract most research?

Abstract

The Australian mammalian fauna is marked by high endemism and evolutionary distinctiveness and comprises monotreme, marsupial, and eutherian (‘placental’) native species. It has suffered the highest extinction rate of any mammalian fauna in any global region; surviving species are threatened by competition and predation from a range of introduced mammal species, and receive low levels of conservation‐oriented funding compared with species in many other countries. We investigated research foci on this unique fauna by using species h‐indices (SHI), and identified both taxonomic bias and subject bias in research effort and research impact for 331 Australian terrestrial mammal species. Species broadly fell into categories we labelled as the ‘good’, the ‘bad’, and the ‘ugly’. The majority of studies on monotremes and marsupials (the ‘good’) are directed towards their physiology and anatomy, with a smaller ecological focus. By contrast, introduced eutherians (the ‘bad’) have attracted greater attention in terms of ecological research, with greater emphasis on methods and technique studies for population control. Despite making up 45% of the 331 species studied, native rodents and bats (the ‘ugly’) have attracted disproportionately little study. While research on invasive species is directed towards problem solving, many Australian native species of conservation significance have attracted little research effort, little recognition, and little funding. Current global and national conservation funding largely overlooks non‐charismatic species, and yet these species may arguably be most in need of scientific and management research effort.

Applying habitat and population‐density models to land‐cover time series to inform IUCN Red List assessments

“…Although data would ideally be scaled up from data collected on the ground (Pereira et al 2013), such measurements are relatively costly and time consuming. Furthermore, in situ observations are typically biased geographically and taxonomically due to a number of factors, such as the availability of research funding, emphasis on charismatic species, location of research institutions and researchers, security issues, and accessibility (Wilson et al 2007;Boakes et al 2010;Fleming & Bateman 2016). Thus, there is increasing need for new technology, models, and data sets to update, improve, and increase the consistency of assessments for large numbers of species.…”

On the overlap between scientific and societal taxonomic attentions — Insights for conservation

“…Species receive uneven attention in terms of scientific research (Clark and May, 2002;Proenca et al, 2008;De Lima et al, 2011;Murray et al, 2015;Donaldson et al, 2016;Fleming and Bateman, 2016). This uneven scientific focus is driven by diverse factors, such as geographic location, species accessibility, suitability for use as model species, conservation status, and researchers' own personal interests (Jarić et al, 2015).…”

Threatened and endangered mammals of Chile: Does research align with conservation information needs?

“…Our research adds to a limited but growing number of studies on biases in research and conservation (Fleming & Bateman, ; Hoffmann et al, ; Jarić et al, ). The fact that we found similar taxonomic and research‐subject biases as previous investigators suggest that these trends may exist across the globe.…”

“…In contrast, Carnivora and Cetartiodactyla, the top predators and large mammals, made up only 41% of the species on the IUICN Red‐List, yet 58% of the articles were written on them. Fleming and Bateman () found similar taxonomic bias for Australian terrestrial mammal species, especially against rodents and other non‐charismatic species.…”