They highlight the influence of cultural discharges on species care

2023/08/29 Galarraga Aiestaran, Ana - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Ekologia
• Berdintasuna
• Giza zientziak
• Biologia

Why are scientific, political and economic efforts being made to investigate and guarantee the future of certain species and others being ignored? To answer this question, a study published in the journal ELife analyzes the causes that influence this type of decision.

In this study 3,007 randomly selected eukaryotic species including animals, plants and fungi have been considered. And they've looked at the relationship between social and scientific interest and scientific attention to each.

For example, to measure the scientific interest of a certain species, articles published in specialized journals have been counted, and to see the social interest visits have been made to the Wikipedia page.

Thus, they have demonstrated that the scientific interest of a species is directly influenced by many social aspects, such as the social consideration of the species as beneficial or harmful, its common name, its inclusion in the list of threatened species of the IUCN, its rarity, its size... On the contrary, its colorful and its evolutionary proximity to humans awaken a great social interest, but does not influence the scientific interest.

In addition, other variables such as the role they play in ecosystems and the danger of extinction are not taken into account scientifically. They therefore propose establishing scientific criteria for deciding which species are investigated and protected.