Taxonomic Chauvinism Revisited: Insight from Parental Care Research

Zachary R Stahlschmidt,Martin Genner

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024192

Abstract

Parental care (any non-genetic contribution by a parent that appears likely to increase the fitness of its offspring) is a widespread trait exhibited by a broad range of animal taxa. In addition to influencing the fitness of parent(s) and offspring, parental care may be inextricably involved in other evolutionary processes, such as sexual selection and the evolution of endothermy. Yet, recent work has demonstrated that bias related to taxonomy is prevalent across many biological disciplines, and research in parental care may be similarly burdened. Thus, I used parental care articles published in six leading journals of fundamental behavioral sciences (Animal Behaviour, Behavioral Ecology, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Ethology, Hormones and Behavior, and Physiology & Behavior) from 2001–2010 (n = 712) to examine the year-to-year dynamics of two types of bias related to taxonomy across animals: (1) taxonomic bias, which exists when research output is not proportional to the frequency of organisms in nature, and (2) taxonomic citation bias, which is a proxy for the breadth of a given article—specifically, the proportion of articles cited that refer solely to the studied taxon. I demonstrate that research on birds likely represents a disproportionate amount of parental care research and, thus, exhibits taxonomic bias. Parental care research on birds and mammals also refers to a relatively narrow range of taxonomic groups when discussing its context and, thus, exhibits taxonomic citation bias. Further, the levels of taxonomic bias and taxonomic citation bias have not declined over the past decade despite cautionary messages about similar bias in related disciplines— in fact, taxonomic bias may have increased. As in Bonnet et al. (2002), my results should not be interpreted as evidence of an ‘ornithological Mafia’ conspiring to suppress other taxonomic groups. Rather, I generate several rational hypotheses to determine why bias persists and to guide future work.

Highlights

IntroductionParental care (any non-genetic contribution by a parent that appears likely to increase the fitness of its offspring) is of paramount importance, as it is a convergent trait used by a broad range of taxa [1]
Parental care is of paramount importance, as it is a convergent trait used by a broad range of taxa [1]
Parental care research was dominated by studies focusing on birds over the past decade (Fig. 1a)

Summary

Introduction

Parental care (any non-genetic contribution by a parent that appears likely to increase the fitness of its offspring) is of paramount importance, as it is a convergent trait used by a broad range of taxa [1]. Despite its benefits to offspring, parental care often reduces aspects of parental fitness (e.g., future reproductive efforts and longevity), which allows natural selection to mediate this parent-offspring tradeoff. A goal of all scientific research is objectivity, evidence in the past decade demonstrates that biological research generally involves some level of bias related to taxonomy [4,5,6,7]. The cause of such bias may be due to the methodological handicaps associated with working on certain taxa [6], taxonomic chauvinism [4], or both

Methods

Results

Conclusion