Abstract
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.
Highlights
Understanding geographical biases in ecological research is important for conservation, planning, prioritisation and management
This study presents a first continent-wide investigation of the spatial biases in ecological research on Australian terrestrial reptiles through a systematic review of the literature, coupled with an analysis of survey effort using species distribution modelling (SDM)[26]
Understanding geographical biases in ecological research is becoming increasingly important for determining what may be impacting on biodiversity[2,4,5]
Summary
Understanding geographical biases in ecological research is important for conservation, planning, prioritisation and management. Existing spatial bias as a result of greater sampling effort in regions of high species richness has been highlighted for work on island reptiles[19] and vouchered plant specimen[20] Such focus has generated a concentration of ecological research localities in biodiversity hotspots and tropical regions[5,10]. Conscious bias in selecting sampling sites may deliver greater efficiencies where surveys are targeting uncommon species at the local scale[22], but the effects of such bias may be more noticeable at regional or national scales Such spatial biases can result in unreliable estimates of population sizes, species richness and community dynamics, or result in blank spots, i.e. locations that are poorly studied[3,20].
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