Familiarity breeds content: assessing bird species popularity with culturomics

Drivers of species knowledge across the tree of life

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.

Selection of Flagship Species and Their Use as Umbrellas in Bird Conservation: A Case Study in Lishui, Zhejiang Province, China

The concept of flagship species is widely used in conservation biology. Flagship birds play a key role in raising conservation funds, increasing awareness of biodiversity conservation, and maintaining ecosystem services. This study selected flagship bird species in Lishui, Zhejiang Province, China, and assessed their conservation effectiveness and ability to serve as umbrella species. A regional bird survey program from 2019-2022 recorded 361 bird species in Lishui. This study constructed a framework of flagship species selection based on social, ecological, economic, and cultural criteria. The analytic hierarchy process-entropy weight method (AHP-EM) was used to rank the score of 361 bird species, and the MaxEnt model was used to analyze the suitable distribution areas of these species. Finally, 10 species, which covered the distribution sites of all 361 bird species, were selected as the flagship species of Lishui. The distribution areas covered all the nature reserves and the priority areas of biodiversity of Lishui, in which these 10 species can also serve as umbrella species to protect local biodiversity. The methodology and ideas in this study could provide insights into the application of conservation concepts at the local level, as well as suggest possible recommendations for local governments to select flagship species for conservation.

Exploring Large Digital Bodies for the Study of Human Behavior

Internet access has become a fundamental component of contemporary society, with major impacts in many areas that offer opportunities for new research insights. The search and deposition of information in digital media form large sets of data known as digital corpora, which can be used to generate structured data, representing repositories of knowledge and evidence of human culture. This information offers opportunities for scientific investigations that contribute to the understanding of human behavior on a large scale, reaching human populations/individuals that would normally be difficult to access. These tools can help access social and cultural varieties worldwide. In this article, we briefly review the potential of these corpora in the study of human behavior. Therefore, we propose Culturomics of Human Behavior as an approach to understand, explain, and predict human behavior using digital corpora.

Digital indicators of interest in natural world heritage sites

Due to their remoteness or boundless nature, activities at Natural Heritage Sites are difficult to monitor. In this study, two digital measures of the interest in Natural Word Heritage Sites are compared: one ex ante based on the number of Wikipedia page views of the site and another ex post derived from actual visitation as measured by the number of Instagram posts. The entire UNESCO database, which includes 248 Natural World Heritage Sites is linked to the 2.8 million Wikipedia page views, the 58 million Instagram posts and the Köppen extreme climate zone categories. Quantile regressions reveal that the main association in common for the two indicators is the risk of the site losing its inscription. Presence in the UNESCO Danger list is associated with reduced interest in a site, particularly in the number of Instagram posts and in the top quartile of Wikipedia views. Years since inscription is also an important explanatory variable, especially for the Instagram posts and the Wikipedia views in the top quartile. The UNESCO selection criterion of outstanding beauty only relates to the Instagram posts. Climate zone is mainly linked to the ex post variable and its upper quartile, where the sites with the most attention are found. Wikipedia views are also negatively associated with sites in Africa, the Arab countries and Latin America. Elevation, size of the area as well as kind of site are all variables not significant. There is a significant correlation between the two outcome variables with a coefficient of 0.5. While the Instagram posts relate clearly to actual visits, the Wikipedia page views is considered a possible leading indicator of future interest in a site.

Uncovering patterns of public perceptions towards biodiversity crime using conservation culturomics

This paper examines aspects of the relationship between (1) the recently typified form of biodiversity crime, (2) information made available to the public through the Internet, and (3) cultural dynamics quantified through info-surveillance methods through Culturomics techniques. We propose two conceptual models: (1) the building-up process of a biodiversity crime culturome, in some language, and (2) a multi-stage biodiversity conservation chain and biodiversity-crime activities relating to each stage. We use crowd search volumes on the Internet on biodiversity crime-related terms and topics as proxies for measuring public interest. The main findings are: (1) the concept of biodiversity-crime per se is still immature and presents low penetration to the general public; (2) biodiversity-crime issues, not recognized as such, are amalgamated in conservation-oriented websites and pages; and (3) differences in perceptions and priorities between general vs. niche public with particular interest(s) in environmental issues- are discernable.

Wanted: virtual or live! How lichens are becoming part of mass internet culture

While restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic have strongly limited and affected the work of scientists and communicators, the pandemic has also encouraged the development of new ways of networking and public engagement. People have had to resort to virtual events, with a subsequent proliferation of webinars, online meetings, and digital resources. In this situation we have had to find new ways of measuring the impact of these activities. Using the activities of the Italian Lichen Society (Società Lichenologica Italiana, SLI), Google Trends and colleagues’ contributions, we evaluated the performances and impacts of virtual tools on lichenological literacy. We compared the relative success of virtual and in-person events and the effort required; we evaluated followers’ appreciation of various categories of posts on SLI Facebook page; and designed a questionnaire to collate information on individual experiences of in-person and virtual events linked to lichens. As expected, online events generally required less effort to put together and deploy than in-person events and engaged more people, especially when recorded and made available online for a long time. Using online searches for the word “lichens” we found an association with national events, and there was a notable increase in membership of SLI over the last 10 years, demonstrating an increasing interest by people in lichens. Without excluding the positive effects of in-person experiences, we believe that online events offer a powerful tool to help increase interest in, and knowledge about lichens. This interest may help to mitigate the impact of anthropogenic activities on this sensitive component of the ecosystem and help human-lichen relationships.

Digital data sources and methods for conservation culturomics

Ongoing loss of biological diversity is primarily the result of unsustainable human behavior. Thus, the long-term success of biodiversity conservation depends on a thorough understanding of human-nature interactions. Such interactions are ubiquitous but vary greatly in time and space and are difficult to monitor efficiently at large spatial scales. However, the Information Age also provides new opportunities to better understand human-nature interactions because many aspects of daily life are recorded in a variety of digital formats. The emerging field of conservation culturomics aims to take advantage of digital data sources and methods to study human-nature interactions and thus to provide new tools for studying conservation at relevant temporal and spatial scales. Nevertheless, technical challenges associated with the identification, access, and analysis of relevant data hamper the wider adoption of culturomics methods. To help overcome these barriers, we propose a conservation culturomics research framework that addresses data acquisition, analysis, and inherent biases. The main sources of culturomic data include web pages, social media, and other digital platforms from which metrics of content and engagement can be obtained. Obtaining raw data from these platforms is usually desirable but requires careful consideration of how to access, store, and prepare the data for analysis. Methods for data analysis include network approaches to explore connections between topics, time-series analysis for temporal data, and spatial modeling to highlight spatial patterns. Outstanding challenges associated with culturomics research include issues of interdisciplinarity, ethics, data biases, and validation. The practical guidance we offer will help conservation researchers and practitioners identify and obtain the necessary data and carry out appropriate analyses for their specific questions, thus facilitating the wider adoption of culturomics approaches for conservation applications.

Using Wikipedia to measure public interest in biodiversity and conservation

The recent growth of online big data offers opportunities for rapid and inexpensive measurement of public interest. Conservation culturomics is an emerging research area that uses online data to study human-nature relationships for conservation. Methods for conservation culturomics, though promising, are still being developed and refined. We considered the potential of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, as a resource for conservation culturomics and outlined methods for using Wikipedia data in conservation. Wikipedia's large size, widespread use, underlying data structure, and open access to both its content and usage analytics make it well suited to conservation culturomics research. Limitations of Wikipedia data include the lack of location information associated with some metadata and limited information on the motivations of many users. Seven methodological steps to consider when using Wikipedia data in conservation include metadata selection, temporality, taxonomy, language representation, Wikipedia geography, physical and biological geography, and comparative metrics. Each of these methodological decisions can affect measures of online interest. As a case study, we explored these themes by analyzing 757 million Wikipedia page views associated with the Wikipedia pages for 10,099 species of birds across 251 Wikipedia language editions. We found that Wikipedia data have the potential to generate insight for conservation and are particularly useful for quantifying patterns of public interest at large scales.

Evidence for Aviculture: Identifying Research Needs to Advance the Role of Ex Situ Bird Populations in Conservation Initiatives and Collection Planning

Birds are the most speciose of all taxonomic groups currently housed in zoos, but this species diversity is not always matched by their inclusion in research output in the peer-reviewed literature. This large and diverse captive population is an excellent tool for research investigation, the findings of which can be relevant to conservation and population sustainability aims. The One Plan Approach to conservation aims to foster tangible conservation relevance of ex situ populations to those animals living in situ. The use of birds in zoo aviculture as proxies for wild-dwelling counterparts is considered from this integrated conservation approach. This paper considers the relevance of ex situ bird populations to field-based conservation action and it illustrates how “added value” to captive populations can be gained from their inclusion in conservation efforts. Current trends in scientific publications that focus on birds are provided to identify patterns in species focus and identification of areas of study that could be relevant to advancing avicultural practices, bird husbandry standards, animal welfare and conservation relevance of such populations. Research into wild birds is extremely useful for furthering how birds are managed in zoological collections. Collaboration between field-based projects that have involved zoo professionals are reviewed, to showcase information transfer from the field to the zoo and vice versa, and the ultimate benefits to aviculture and the added value that can be brought to zoo bird populations. Suggested ideas for research into specific areas of ex situ population management and conservation, and avicultural practices are provided to guide future researchers in their endeavors to ensure we have the evidence needed to care for and conserve birds as appropriately and as viably as possible.

The physics of conservation culturomics: the mass-energy-information equivalence principle to address misrepresented controversies

The application of the mass-energy-information equivalence principle developed after the experimentally demonstrated Landauer's principle on thermodynamics, entropy, and information is an unexplored but promising path in search of objectivity and compatibility between strict physical and mathematical entities and relative human behavior in biodiversity conservation issues. Conservation culturomics is proposed as the epistemic methodology and programme to trace the evolution in cultural human-nature relationships. Historically, controversies do persist between pro- vs. non- environmental opinions and policies. The proposed combination of physics and culturomics is feasible, although complex, multileveled, and depending on a series of academic, technical, and political prerequisites. In the era of staggering information technologies, Internet use proliferation and cultural relativism, reliable information on conservation knowledge vs. often unfounded story-tellings is a sine qua non for the development of badly needed modern global conservation strategies, targets, and goals.

Societal attention toward extinction threats: a comparison between climate change and biological invasions

Public attention and interest in the fate of endangered species is a crucial prerequisite for effective conservation programs. Societal awareness and values will largely determine whether conservation initiatives receive necessary support and lead to adequate policy change. Using text data mining, we assessed general public attention in France, Germany and the United Kingdom toward climate change and biological invasions in relation to endangered amphibian, reptile, bird and mammal species. Our analysis revealed that public attention patterns differed among species groups and countries but was globally higher for climate change than for biological invasions. Both threats received better recognition in threatened than in non-threatened species, as well as in native species than in species from other countries and regions. We conclude that more efficient communication regarding the threat from biological invasions should be developed, and that conservation practitioners should take advantage of the existing attention toward climate change.

Circadian preferences of birdwatchers in Poland: do "owls" prefer watching night birds, and "larks" prefer daytime ones?

Birdwatching is a very popular and increasing leisure activity, and the study and observation of birds is more popular in the morning due to the greater activity among birds at that time of day. The aim of our study was to find out whether there was a relationship between the circadian preference of observers and their favourite bird species and whether it was influenced by such factors as professional status, age and gender. In an e-mail survey we asked a total of 433 Polish ornithologists (professionals) or birdwatchers (non-professionals) for their morningness–eveningness preferences (four categories) and favourite (open choice) bird species and received 143 responses. The temporal (circadian) preferences of respondents declined from early morning (35.7%) to evening/nighttime (11.4%). Circadian preference categories differed significantly by age, with early morning respondents significantly older. These preference categories did not differ significantly in terms of response time to the survey invitation or in the percentage of their favourite birds that were categorised as daytime birds. A total of 204 species were identified as favourite birds of which 34 species were mentioned by five or more respondents, with only two, the common crane Grus grus and the Eurasian pygmy owl Glaucidium passerinum mentioned by more than 10% of respondents. The white stork Ciconia ciconia was more popular with professionals than non-professionals and the swift Apus apus less popular. A significant gender × circadian preference interaction was detected for the percentage of favourite birds categorised as daytime birds, with fewer daytime birds among early morning female recorders. The presented results are obviously of a correlative nature, but open the door for further, more advanced study and suggest there may be a need to investigate temporal biases when analysing citizen-based data.

Global disparity in public awareness of the biological control potential of invertebrates

Invertebrates make up over 95% of animal biodiversity on Earth and contribute to multiple ecosystem services (ES) in natural and human-dominated systems. One such service, biological control (BC) of herbivorous pests, is a core component of sustainable intensification of agriculture, yet its importance is routinely overlooked. Here we report a macro-scale, cross-cultural assessment of the public visibility (or 'salience') of BC invertebrates, using high-throughput analysis of large bodies of digitized text (i.e., 'culturomics'). Using binomial scientific name frequency as proxy for visibility, we compared the extent to which a given species featured in webpages within either scientific media or the entire worldwide web, and in total search volume at varying spatial scale. For a set of 339 BC invertebrate species, scientific and internet coverage averaged 1020 and 1735 webpages, respectively. Substantial variability was recorded among BC taxa with Coleoptera, Hemiptera and Nematoda having comparatively high visibility. Online visibility exhibited large geographical variability ranging from France covering BC invertebrates on average in 1050 webpages versus Thailand or Indonesia on just 31-38. This work represents the first extensive use of culturomics to assess public visibility of insect-mediated ES. As BC uptake is dictated by stakeholders' access to (agro-ecological) information, our work identifies geographically-delineated areas that are differentially attuned to the concept of invertebrate BC, pinpoints opportunities for focusing education campaigns and awareness-raising, enables real-time tracking of BC public appeal, and informs public policy.

Nutritional Culturomics and Big Data: Macroscopic Patterns of Change in Food, Nutrition and Diet Choices

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE

Nutritional culturomics (NCs) is a specific focus area of culturomics epistemology developing digital humanities and computational linguistics approaches to search for macro-patterns of public interest in food, nutrition and diet choice as a major component of cultural evolution. Cultural evolution is considered as a driver at the interface of environmental and food science, economy and policy.

METHODS

The paper presents an epistemic programme that builds on the use of big data from webbased services such as Google Trends, Google Adwords or Google Books Ngram Viewer.

RESULTS

A comparison of clearly defined NCs in terms of geography, culture, linguistics, literacy, technological setups or time period might be used to reveal variations and singularities in public's behavior in terms of adaptation and mitigation policies in the agri-food and public health sectors.

CONCLUSION

The proposed NC programme is developed along major axes: (1) the definition of an NC; (2) the reconstruction of food and diet histories; (3) the nutrition related epidemiology; (4) the understanding of variability of NCs; (5) the methodological diversification of NCs; (6) the quantifiable limitations and flaws of NCs. A series of indicative examples are presented regarding these NC epistemology components.

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

Attention directed at different species by society and science is particularly relevant within the field of conservation, as societal preferences will strongly impact support for conservation initiatives and their success. Here, we assess the association between societal and research interests in four charismatic and threatened species groups, derived from a range of different online sources and social media platforms as well as scientific publications. We found a high level of concordance between scientific and societal taxonomic attention, which was consistent among assessed species groups and media sources. Results indicate that research is apparently not as disconnected from the interests of society as it is often reproached, and that societal support for current research objectives should be adequate. While the high degree of similarity between scientific and societal interest is both striking and satisfying, the dissimilarities are also interesting, as new scientific findings may constitute a constant source of novel interest for the society. In that respect, additional efforts will be necessary to draw scientific and societal focus towards less charismatic species that are in urgent need of research and conservation attention.

Popular interest in vertebrates does not reflect extinction risk and is associated with bias in conservation investment

The interrelationship between public interest in endangered species and the attention they receive from the conservation community is the ‘flywheel’ driving much effort to abate global extinction rates. Yet big international conservation non-governmental organisations have typically focused on the plight of a handful of appealing endangered species, while the public remains largely unaware of the majority. We quantified the existence of bias in popular interest towards species, by analysing global internet search interest in 36,873 vertebrate taxa. Web search interest was higher for mammals and birds at greater risk of extinction, but this was not so for fish, reptiles and amphibians. Our analysis reveals a global bias in popular interest towards vertebrates that is undermining incentives to invest financial capital in thousands of species threatened with extinction. Raising the popular profile of these lesser known endangered and critically endangered species will generate clearer political and financial incentives for their protection.

Are we choosing the right flagships? The bird species and traits Australians find most attractive

Understanding what people like about birds can help target advocacy for bird conservation. However, testing preferences for characteristics of birds is methodologically challenging, with bias difficult to avoid. In this paper we test whether preferred characteristics of birds in general are shared by the individual bird species the same people nominate as being those they consider most attractive. We then compare these results with the birds which appear most frequently in the imagery of conservation advocates. Based on a choice model completed by 638 general public respondents from around Australia, we found a preference for small colourful birds with a melodious call. However, when the same people were asked which five birds they found most attractive, 48% named no more than three, mostly large well-known species. Images displayed by a leading Australian bird conservation organisation also favoured large colourful species. The choice model results suggest conservation advocates can promote a much wider range of bird types as flagships, particularly smaller species that might otherwise be neglected.

Considering connections between Hollywood and biodiversity conservation

Cinema offers a substantial opportunity to share messages with a wide audience. However, there is little research or evidence about the potential benefits and risks of cinema for conservation. Given their global reach, cinematic representations could be important in raising awareness of conservation issues and species of concern, as well as encouraging greater audience engagement due to their heightened emotional impact on viewers. Yet there are also risks associated with increased exposure, including heightened visitor pressure to environmentally sensitive areas or changes to consumer demand for endangered species. Conservationists can better understand and engage with the film industry by studying the impact of movies on audience awareness and behavior, identifying measurable impacts on conservation outcomes, and engaging directly with the movie industry, for example, in an advisory capacity. This improved understanding and engagement can harness the industry's potential to enhance the positive impacts of movies featuring species, sites, and issues of conservation concern and to mitigate any negative effects. A robust evidence base for evaluating and planning these engagements, and for informing related policy and management decisions, needs to be built.