Evaluating conservation biology texts for bias in biodiversity representation

ecosystems, along with limited examples of genetic diversity, may promote an over-simplified understanding of Earth’s biosphere. All books exhibited some level of bias in their coverage of Earth’s biosphere, especially in their representation of taxonomic groups. Fundamentals of Conservation Biology, 3rd edition, most accurately reflected abundances of Earth’s taxa. This book also included more examples of genetic diversity than any other textbook we examined. On the other hand, Key Topics in Conservation Biology 2 least accurately reflected Earth’s spe- cies abundances. Both Key Topics in Conservation Biology 2 and Conservation Biology for All included the fewest examples of genetic diversity. Notably, even though some textbooks were more representative of biodiversity than others, all books exhibited bias. Examples of birds and mammals far outweighed examples of all other taxa, coverage of ecosystems was skewed towards forests, and genetic diversity was rarely discussed. No other assessments of the biases present in conservation biology textbooks exists. How- ever, Fazey et al. [20] examined the 547 papers published in 2001 in Biodiversity & Conserva- tion, Biological Conservation, and Conservation Biology and found that research reported in these journals was biased toward vertebrates, forests, and natural landscapes. These results are Fig 6. The ecosystem where examples were described as a percent of examples in each textbook. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234877.g006 PLOS ONE Bias in conservation biology textbooks

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