2024-03-28T13:04:21Zhttp://digital.csic.es/dspace-oai/requestoai:digital.csic.es:10261/1568672017-10-31T01:56:29Zcom_10261_13com_10261_8col_10261_266
00925njm 22002777a 4500
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Ibáñez-Álamo, Juan Diego
author
Rubio, Enrique
author
Zira, Kwanye Bitrus
author
2017
The expansion of urban areas is currently one of themost important worldwide landscape
changes. This process, termed urbanization, has important ecological effects and is
known to alter many aspects of the biology of organisms (including birds). However,
human-nature interactions can also be affected by this process. We hypothesized that
urbanization can particularly affect how intensively we investigate birds. We predict that
species living in close proximity to humans will be more easily or preferably studied, thus
promoting a bias in research effort toward urban birds. In order to test this hypothesis
we have collected a detailed database of urban and non-urban avian communities
including information from five biogeographic realms and more than 750 bird species.
We obtained four different indicators of research effort (two previously considered and
two new ones) as well as information on different confounding factors that are known
to affect research effort such as conservation status, body mass, distribution range
and phylogeny, in addition to the previously unconsidered historical factor of year of
description of the species. We found a positive and significant association between
the degree of urbanization of a species and how frequently it is investigated. We also
found the expected effect for biogeographic realm, body mass and distribution range,
and year of description, but not for conservation status. In addition, we found a strong
correlation among all research effort variables which support the use of Google Scholar
as a reliable source for these kind of studies. Our findings suggest that urbanization is not
only affecting the biology of organisms but also how we study them. These results might
have important implications if this research bias is maintained in the long term. Future
investigation should aim at exploring the ultimate reasons for this research bias toward
urban birds and whether it is also happening for other groups of organisms.
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 5:41 (2017)
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/156867
10.3389/fevo.2017.00041
Birds
Human-nature interactions
Research effort
Urnanization
The Degree of Urbanization of a Species Affects How Intensively It Is Studied: A Global Perspective