Another form of bias in conservation research.

Abstract

In their recent analysis of conservation research literature, J. A. Clark and R. M. May (“Taxonomic bias in conservation research, Letters, 12 July, p. [191][1]) show that vertebrates are grossly overrepresented in conservation research, whereas invertebrates are underrepresented and plants are adequately represented when compared with their prevalence in nature. The authors show disappointment in this trend because successful conservation requires the study of all groups of organisms. I completely agree, and for this reason, I in turn was disappointed in their analysis of the literature because they considered only plant and animal taxa, ignoring other groups, particularly microorganisms. Yet, there is increasing evidence within the published ecological literature that microbes can play important roles in the functioning of ecosystems and in the regulation of plant and animal populations and communities. To evaluate any existing bias against microbial taxa, I reviewed 5 years of issues (1997–2001) in three journals ( Conservation Biology , Biodiversity and Conservation , and Biodiversity and Distribution ). I found that microbes were rarely studied at all: fungi/lichens, 0.024 as a proportion of all articles; protists, 0.007; and bacteria/viruses, 0.006. These values are far lower than the proportion of articles considering plants or animal taxa, as reported by Clark and May, even though microbes may arguably represent the majority of the taxonomic diversity in natural ecosystems. It is clear from these data that conservation research is even more unbalanced than reported by Clark and May. # Response {#article-title-2} Klironomos makes a valid and important point. It is, however, a bit odd for him to be “disappointed” in our analysis. We did not explicitly include microorganisms in our analysis of the literature on conservation biology because, as Klironomos shows, such studies at present constitute a negligible fraction. We nevertheless agree that the paucity of literature in this area is not a good thing. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.297.5579.191b