Abstract
Activities involving observation of wild organisms (e.g. wildlife watching, tidepooling) can provide recreational and learning opportunities, with biologically diverse animal assemblages expected to be more stimulating to humans. In turn, more diverse communities may enhance human interest and facilitate provisioning of cultural services. However, no experimental tests of this biodiversity-interest hypothesis exist to date. We therefore investigated the effects of different dimensions of animal biodiversity (species richness, phyletic richness and functional diversity) on self-reported interest using tide pools as a model system. We performed two experiments by manipulating: (1) the richness of lower (species) and higher taxonomic levels (phyla) in an image based, online survey, and (2) the richness of the higher taxonomic level (phyla) in live public exhibits. In both experiments, we further quantified functional diversity, which varied freely, and within the online experiment we also included the hue diversity and colourfulness arising from the combination of organisms and the background scenes. Interest was increased by phyletic richness (both studies), animal species richness (online study) and functional diversity (online study). A structural equation model revealed that functional diversity and colourfulness (of the whole scene) also partially mediated the effects of phyletic richness on interest in the online study. In both studies, the presence of three of four phyla additively increased interest, supporting the importance of multiple, diverse phyla rather than a single particularly interesting phylum. These results provide novel experimental evidence that multiple dimensions of biodiversity enhance human interest and suggest that conservation initiatives that maintain or restore biodiversity will help stimulate interest in ecosystems, facilitating educational and recreational benefits.
Highlights
Ecosystems underpin human wellbeing through their provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services[1,2,3]
The first experiment was an image-based online study to understand how biodiversity affects self-reported interest in a tide pool image. To further understand these effects, we explored whether and how the influence of species and phyletic richness on interest was mediated by functional diversity, and the scene-level properties of hue diversity and colourfulness
Human interest is a functional emotion linked to action choice and greater interest is likely to lead to greater engagement with natural systems that, in turn, can facilitate the provision of cultural ecosystem services
Summary
Ecosystems underpin human wellbeing through their provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services[1,2,3]. Ecosystems with greater numbers of taxa both tend to incorporate a broader range of organismal traits (functional diversity)[17], many of which are visible and conspicuous to the human observer (e.g. organism colour, body shape, locomotion), and are more likely to include taxa with traits towards the extremes of trait-space[18] (e.g. large size, bright colours) These attributes of biodiverse ecosystems coincide strongly with empirical findings within the psychology of interest: novelty, complexity and vividness increase human interest, which, in turn, triggers exploration, intrinsic motivation and learning[19]. Tide pools provide a window into marine ecosystems, allowing people to observe and interact with animals, bringing recreational and educational benefits[33,34,36,37] These pools are often naturally biodiverse, with many co-occurring species, functional forms and phyla[38]. Because animals vary in their body colours, and human preferences for scenes have been shown to respond strongly to colour characteristics[25], we explicitly quantified both the average colourfulness (vividness) and the diversity of colour hues within scenes as a whole (capturing the interplay of contained organisms, and background tidepool scenes), to better understand the scene properties and potential mechanisms linking biodiversity and interest
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