Evaluating conservation biology texts for bias in biodiversity representation

RESEARCH ARTICLE Evaluating conservation biology texts for bias in biodiversity representation Katherine Stahl1, Christopher A. LepczykID1*, Rebecca A. Christoffel2 1 School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, United States of America, 2 Christoffel Conservation, Madison, WI, United States of America * lepczyk@auburn.edu Abstract A critical component of textbooks is fair representation of the material they cover. Within conservation biology, fair coverage is particularly important given Earth’s breadth of species and diversity of ecosystems. However, research on species tends to be biased towards cer- tain taxonomic groups and geographic areas and their associated ecosystems, so it is possi- ble that textbooks may exhibit similar biases. Considering the possibility of bias, our goal was to evaluate contemporary conservation biology textbooks to determine if they are repre- sentative of Earth’s biodiversity. We found that textbooks did not accurately reflect Earth’s biodiversity. Species, ecosystems, and continents were unevenly represented, few exam- ples mentioned genetic diversity, and examples of negative human influence on the environ- ment outweighed positive examples. However, in terms of aquatic versus terrestrial representation, textbooks presented a representative sample. Our findings suggest that modern conservation biology textbooks are biased in their coverage, which could have important consequences for educating our next generation of scientists and practitioners. Introduction

Much research and discussion has occurred regarding taxonomic biases (i.e. research is not proportional to organisms’ frequency in nature; [1]) in scientific research, research publica- tions, conservation funding, biodiversity databases, and conservation actions (e.g., species re- introductions). Such work is important because it identifies current knowledge gaps and can help to guide future research [2]. Previous work on taxonomic bias has highlighted that birds and mammals are over-represented in scientific research [1], even though they account for less than 1% of described species diversity [3]. Such biases leave larger groups of organisms vastly under-studied and poorly understood. Bias also exists within taxonomic groups. For example, butterflies and moths account for only 15% of insect species but were the subjects of 48% of insect studies [1]. Similarly, while sea turtles account for only 0.1% of global reptile species richness, they were the subjects of 20.8% of reptile studies published in the wildlife research literature in the 1990s and 14.0% of such articles published in the 2000s [4]. In the case of reintroduction projects on bird species PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234877 July 10, 2020 1 / 11 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Stahl K, Lepczyk CA, Christoffel RA (2020) Evaluating conservation biology texts for bias in biodiversity representation. PLoS ONE 15 (7): e0234877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0234877 Editor: Clinton N. Jenkins, Instituto de Pesquisas

Ecolo´gicas, BRAZIL Received: January 30, 2020 Accepted: June 3, 2020 Published: July 10, 2020 Copyright: © 2020 Stahl et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and supporting information file Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.