School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Gold Coast campus, Australia, 4222.
Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University, Gold Coast campus, Australia, 4222.
Sci Rep. 2020 Jun 16;10(1):9691. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-66719-x.
Understanding geographical biases in ecological research is important for conservation, planning, prioritisation and management. However, conservation efforts may be limited by data availability and poor understanding of the nature of potential spatial bias. We conduct the first continent-wide analysis of spatial bias associated with Australian terrestrial reptile ecological research. To evaluate potential research deficiencies, we used Maxent modelling to predict the distributions of 646 reptile studies published from 1972 to 2017. Based on existing distributions of 1631 individual reptile study locations, reptile species richness, proximity to universities, human footprint and location of protected areas, we found the strongest predictor of reptile research locations was proximity to universities (40.8%). This was followed by species richness (22.9%) and human footprint (20.1%), while protected areas were the weakest predictor (16.2%). These results highlight that research effort is driven largely by accessibility and we consequently identify potential target areas for future research that can be optimised to ensure adequate representation of reptile communities.
了解生态研究中的地理偏差对于保护、规划、优先排序和管理至关重要。然而，由于数据的可用性以及对潜在空间偏差性质的理解不足，保护工作可能会受到限制。我们对澳大利亚陆地爬行动物生态研究中与空间偏差相关的问题进行了首次全大陆范围的分析。为了评估潜在的研究不足，我们使用最大熵模型来预测 1972 年至 2017 年间发表的 646 项爬行动物研究的分布情况。基于 1631 个个体爬行动物研究地点的现有分布、物种丰富度、与大学的接近程度、人类足迹和保护区的位置，我们发现，影响爬行动物研究地点的最强预测因子是与大学的接近程度（40.8%）。其次是物种丰富度（22.9%）和人类足迹（20.1%），而保护区的预测能力最弱（16.2%）。这些结果表明，研究工作主要受到可及性的驱动，因此我们确定了未来研究的潜在目标区域，可以对其进行优化，以确保爬行动物群落得到充分的代表。
