Water Research Institute, National Research Council (CNR), Verbania Pallanza, Italy; Finnish Museum of Natural History, Helsinki, Finland; National Biodiversity Future Center, Palermo, Italy; Biodiversity Working Group (GDL Biodiversità), CNR, Rome, Italy.
Finnish Museum of Natural History, Helsinki, Finland.
Curr Biol. 2023 Jan 23;33(2):R59-R60. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.003.
Amidst a global biodiversity crisis, the word 'biodiversity' has become indispensable for conservation and management. Yet, biodiversity is often used as a buzzword in scientific literature. Resonant titles of papers claiming to have studied 'global biodiversity' may be used to promote research focused on a few taxonomic groups, habitats, or facets of biodiversity - taxonomic, (phylo)genetic, or functional. This usage may lead to extrapolating results outside the target systems of these studies with direct consequences for our understanding of life on Earth and its practical conservation. Here, we used a random sample of papers with the word 'biodiversity' in their title to take a long view of the use of this term. Despite improvements in analytical tools, monitoring technologies, and data availability, we found that the taxonomic scope of research articles has not increased in recent years. We also show that studies with a wider taxonomic scope attract more citations and online attention. Our results have broad ramifications for understanding how extrapolating from studies with narrow taxonomic scope affects our view of global biodiversity and conservation.
在全球生物多样性危机中，“生物多样性”一词对于保护和管理来说已经不可或缺。然而，生物多样性在科学文献中经常被当作一个流行词使用。声称研究过“全球生物多样性”的论文往往会使用一些有共鸣的标题，这些标题可能会将研究重点放在少数分类群、生境或生物多样性的某些方面——分类学（系统发生）、（系统发生）遗传或功能。这种用法可能会导致将结果推断到这些研究的目标系统之外，从而直接影响我们对地球上生命及其实际保护的理解。在这里，我们使用了一个标题中带有“生物多样性”一词的随机样本论文，从长远角度来看待这个术语的使用情况。尽管分析工具、监测技术和数据可用性都有所改进，但我们发现近年来研究论文的分类学范围并没有增加。我们还表明，具有更广泛分类学范围的研究吸引了更多的引用和在线关注。我们的研究结果对理解从具有狭窄分类学范围的研究中推断出来的内容如何影响我们对全球生物多样性和保护的看法具有广泛的影响。
