Department of Genetics, Evolution & Environment, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, U.K.
Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, Regent's Park, London, NW1 4RY, U.K.
Conserv Biol. 2021 Apr;35(2):472-482. doi: 10.1111/cobi.13701. Epub 2021 Mar 22.
Although threats to global biodiversity are well known, slowing current rates of biodiversity loss remains a challenge. The Aichi targets set out 20 goals on which the international community should act to alleviate biodiversity decline, 1 of which (Target 1) aims to raise public awareness of the importance of biodiversity. Although conventional indicators for Target 1 are of low spatial and temporal coverage, conservation culturomics metrics show how biodiversity awareness can be quantified at the global scale. Following methods used for the Living Planet Index, we devised a species awareness index (SAI) to measure change in species awareness based on Wikipedia views. We calculated this index at the page level for 41,197 species listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) across 10 Wikipedia languages and >2 billion views from 1 July 2015 to 30 March 2020. Bootstrapped indices for the page-level SAI showed that overall awareness of biodiversity increased marginally over time, although there were differences among taxonomic classes and languages. Among taxonomic classes, overall awareness increased fastest for reptiles and slowest for amphibians. Among languages, overall species awareness increased fastest for Japanese and slowest for Chinese and German users. Although awareness of species as a whole increased and was significantly higher for traded species, from January 2016 through January 2020, change in awareness appeared not to be strongly related to whether the species is traded or is a pollinator. As a data source for public biodiversity awareness, the SAI could be integrated into the Conservation International Biodiversity Engagement Indicator.
尽管全球生物多样性面临的威胁众所周知，但减缓生物多样性丧失的速度仍然是一个挑战。爱知生物多样性目标提出了 20 个目标，国际社会应据此采取行动，减轻生物多样性的下降，其中 1 个目标（目标 1）旨在提高公众对生物多样性重要性的认识。尽管目标 1 的传统指标在空间和时间上的覆盖范围较低，但保护文化组学指标表明，在全球范围内如何量化生物多样性意识。我们采用与“生命星球指数”相同的方法，设计了一个物种意识指数（SAI），以衡量基于维基百科浏览量的物种意识变化。我们根据国际自然保护联盟（IUCN）列出的 41,197 个物种在 10 种维基百科语言中的页面级别计算了这个指数，并对 2015 年 7 月 1 日至 2020 年 3 月 30 日期间的超过 20 亿次浏览量进行了计算。页面级 SAI 的引导指数表明，总体而言，生物多样性意识随着时间的推移略有增加，尽管在分类学类群和语言之间存在差异。在分类学类群中，爬行动物的整体意识增加最快，两栖动物最慢。在语言方面，日语的物种整体意识增加最快，中文和德语最慢。尽管作为一个整体的物种意识增加了，贸易物种的意识显著更高，但从 2016 年 1 月到 2020 年 1 月，意识的变化似乎与物种是否被交易或是否是传粉者没有很强的关系。作为公众生物多样性意识的数据源，SAI 可以被整合到保护国际生物多样性参与指标中。
