Geographical Bias Research Articles

The importance of Brazilian Conservation Units for the diversity of gall-inducing insects: a study on gall-inducing insect richness in the Chapada Diamantina National Park, state of Bahia, Brazil.

Conservation Units (CUs) tend to have a high richness of herbivorous insects, including gall-inducing insects. Despite this, gall surveys carried out in these environments are punctual and some units have never had their galls investigated, such as the Chapada Diamantina National Park, Bahia (Chapada Diamantina Parna). Aiming to reduce this gap and contribute to future studies in CUs, this study aimed to survey the galls of the Chapada Diamantina Parna, Lençóis, as well as to investigate trends in research on galls in CUs in Brazil. For that, collections were carried out on monthly trips for one year. Published gall surveys were compiled. A total of 107 morphotypes induced in 88 host species were recorded. Most galls are formed in leaves, globoid in shape, green in color, and induced by Cecidomyiidae. This park has a relatively high richness of galls compared to other CUs, demonstrating its importance in the conservation of gall-inducing insects. The results also revealed that the number of surveys has been increasing over the years and that the Southeast concentrates the largest number of studies, a region that also gathers the largest number of specialists, demonstrating a geographic bias in the data.

A bibliometric analysis of geographic disparities in the authorship of leading medical journals

BackgroundIt has previously been reported that authors from developing countries are underrepresented in medical journals. Here, we aimed to build a comprehensive landscape of the geographical representation in medical research publications.MethodsWe collected bibliometric data of original research articles (n = 10,558) published between 2010 and 2019 in five leading medical journals and geolocated these by the institute of the corresponding authors. We introduced two simple metrics, the International Research Impact and the Domestic Self-Citation Index, to assess publishing and citing patterns by cities and countries.ResultsWe show that only 32 countries published more than 10 publications in 10 years equaling 98.9% of all publications. English-speaking countries USA (48.2%), UK (15.9%), Canada (5.3%), and Australia (3.2%) are most represented, but with a declining trend in recent years. When normalized to citation count, 9/32 countries published ≥ 10% more than expected. In total, 85.7% of the publication excess originate from the USA and UK. We demonstrate similar geographical bias at the municipal level. Finally, we discover that journals more commonly publish studies from the country in which the journal is based and authors are more likely to cite work from their own country.ConclusionsThe study reveals Anglocentric dominance, domestic preference, but increased geographical representation in recent years in medical publishing. Similar audits could mitigate possible national and regional disparities in any academic field.

Bayesian Total-Evidence Dating Revisits Sloth Phylogeny and Biogeography: A Cautionary Tale on Morphological Clock Analyses.

Combining morphological and molecular characters through Bayesian total-evidence dating allows inferring the phylogenetic and timescale framework of both extant and fossil taxa, while accounting for the stochasticity and incompleteness of the fossil record. Such an integrative approach is particularly needed when dealing with clades such as sloths (Mammalia: Folivora), for which developmental and biomechanical studies have shown high levels of morphological convergence whereas molecular data can only account for a limited percentage of their total species richness. Here, we propose an alternative hypothesis of sloth evolution that emphasizes the pervasiveness of morphological convergence and the importance of considering the fossil record and an adequate taxon sampling in both phylogenetic and biogeographic inferences. Regardless of different clock models and morphological datasets, the extant sloth Bradypus is consistently recovered as a megatherioid, and Choloepus as a mylodontoid, in agreement with molecular-only analyses. The recently extinct Caribbean sloths (Megalocnoidea) are found to be a monophyletic sister-clade of Megatherioidea, in contrast to previous phylogenetic hypotheses. Our results contradict previous morphological analyses and further support the polyphyly of "Megalonychidae," whose members were found in five different clades. Regardless of taxon sampling and clock models, the Caribbean colonization of sloths is compatible with the exhumation of islands along Aves Ridge and its geological time frame. Overall, our total-evidence analysis illustrates the difficulty of positioning highly incomplete fossils, although a robust phylogenetic framework was recovered by an a posteriori removal of taxa with high percentages of missing characters. Elimination of these taxa improved topological resolution by reducing polytomies and increasing node support. However, it introduced a systematic and geographic bias because most of these incomplete specimens are from northern South America. This is evident in biogeographic reconstructions, which suggest Patagonia as the area of origin of many clades when taxa are underrepresented, but Amazonia and/or Central and Southern Andes when all taxa are included. More generally, our analyses demonstrate the instability of topology and divergence time estimates when using different morphological datasets and clock models and thus caution against making macroevolutionary inferences when node support is weak or when uncertainties in the fossil record are not considered.

Applying a zero-corrected, gravity model estimator reduces bias due to heterogeneity in healthcare utilization in community-scale, passive surveillance datasets of endemic diseases

Data on population health are vital to evidence-based decision making but are rarely adequately localized or updated in continuous time. They also suffer from low ascertainment rates, particularly in rural areas where barriers to healthcare can cause infrequent touch points with the health system. Here, we demonstrate a novel statistical method to estimate the incidence of endemic diseases at the community level from passive surveillance data collected at primary health centers. The zero-corrected, gravity-model (ZERO-G) estimator explicitly models sampling intensity as a function of health facility characteristics and statistically accounts for extremely low rates of ascertainment. The result is a standardized, real-time estimate of disease incidence at a spatial resolution nearly ten times finer than typically reported by facility-based passive surveillance systems. We assessed the robustness of this method by applying it to a case study of field-collected malaria incidence rates from a rural health district in southeastern Madagascar. The ZERO-G estimator decreased geographic and financial bias in the dataset by over 90% and doubled the agreement rate between spatial patterns in malaria incidence and incidence estimates derived from prevalence surveys. The ZERO-G estimator is a promising method for adjusting passive surveillance data of common, endemic diseases, increasing the availability of continuously updated, high quality surveillance datasets at the community scale.

Four billion years of secular compositional change in granitoids

From a new carefully filtered geochemical database, kernel density and bootstrap resampling time series show the existence of three compositional time intervals (> 200 Myr duration) in granitoids: Interval 1 the Archean (4.0–2.5 Ga), Interval 2 the Mesoproterozoic (1.8–1.0 Ga), and Interval 3 the Neoproterozoic-Phanerozoic (1.0–0 Ma). During these intervals, sample-based and site-based geochemical averages show minimal differences, which together with the widespread geographic distribution of sites suggests they are global in extent. Most incompatible elements in granitoids are low in Interval 1, high in Interval 2 and intermediate in Interval 3. In contrast to compositional intervals, compositional anomalies (≤ 200 Myr) appear to be of only local geographic significance (except for the Rodinia anomaly at 1.0 Ga). Tectonic settings in Intervals 2 and 3 granitoids are similar, the major difference is a smaller fraction of within-plate types during Interval 2. After 2.5 Ga, almost all granitoid sites are in orogens. The major differences between our secular geochemical results and those previously reported using other databases are due to 1) lack of thorough filtering, 2) variable bin widths in compiled databases and 3) local geographic biases. Our results indicate that secular geochemical trends and anomalies should not be considered to be of global extent without careful filtering and thorough examination of the geographic distribution of samples. Our results also show that caution must be exercised to make sure that sites with strongly deviant compositions do not overly influence mean values.Although heating of the upper mantle may be required to explain the Mesoproterozoic granitoid interval, continental lithosphere insulation is not supported as a major cause of this heating because granitoids and large igneous provinces are chiefly in peripheral orogens and not in cratons as predicted by the insulation model. There are two transitions in granitoid composition: the first at 2.5–2.0 Ga may reflect a decreasing depth of magma generation and crustal thickness in response to propagation of sustained subduction around the globe, and the second at 1–0.5 Ga, continued cooling of the mantle, lithosphere strengthening, and perhaps subduction of continental lithosphere.

Exploring the limitations in how ChatGPT introduces environmental justice issues in the United States: A case study of 3,108 counties

The potential of Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, has sparked discussions among researchers and the public. This study empirically explores the capabilities and limitations of ChatGPT, specifically its portrayal of environmental justice issues. Using OpenAI’s ChatGPT API, we asked ChatGPT (GPT-4) to answer questions about environmental justice issues in 3,108 counties in the contiguous United States. Our findings suggest that ChatGPT provides a general overview of environmental justice issues. Consistent with research, ChatGPT appears to acknowledge the disproportionate distribution of environmental pollutants and toxic materials in low-income communities and those inhabited by people of color. However, our results also highlighted ChatGPT’s shortcomings in detailing specific local environmental justice issues, particularly in disadvantaged (e.g., rural and low-income) counties. For instance, ChatGPT could not provide information on local-specific environmental justice issues for 2,593 of 3,108 counties (83%). The results of the binary logistic regression model revealed that counties with lower population densities, higher percentages of white population, and lower incomes are less likely to receive local-specific responses from the ChatGPT. This could indicate a potential regional disparity in the volume and quality of training data, hinting at geographical biases. Our findings offer insights and implications for educators, researchers, and AI developers.

A synthesis of the diversity of freshwater fish migrations in the Amazon basin

AbstractIn the Amazon, the world's largest river basin, migrations within freshwater habitats are one of the predominant life history strategies for fishes. The flood pulse and the extensive river network provide aquatic organisms with temporal and spatial accessibility to a mosaic of freshwater habitats. Although migratory fish species are central to freshwater ecosystems and fisheries, the knowledge of species and migratory patterns has traditionally relied on anecdotal and scattered information, lacking a unifying methodological and conceptual framework. We quantitatively synthesize the evidence about this biological phenomenom in the Amazon basin through a systematic literature review. We constructed a reference database of migratory events in the Amazon basin, including species, life stages, purposes, direction, habitats and subbasins. We found that 223 species were documented in 90 references as performing migrations distributed across eight orders and 31 families. Migration is a conserved trait in the evolutionary history of Amazonian fish fauna, suggesting that ~41% of migratory species are likely unreported. We noted a geographical bias in the report of migratory events towards 13 of the 27 major subbasins of the Amazon. We found a significant association between the hydrological timing at the beginning and end of migrations across species, including reproduction as the most commonly reported purpose. However, most species lack the application of robust methods (e.g. telemetry, otolith microchemistry) to classify them as migratory, relying upon secondary sources of information (i.e. reviews or species checklists). Further, we discuss future opportunities and challenges to continue the study of fish migrations in the Amazon basin.

Understanding the geography of discontent: perceptions of government’s biases against left-behind places

ABSTRACT Governments need to make choices over distributing resources and managing socioeconomic change, which can have geographically uneven effects. This may give rise to perceptions of institutional bias against left-behind places, treating them like they ‘don’t matter’, which has been widely linked to populism. Which voters develop this viewpoint remains unclear. This study explores citizens’ perceptions of geographic bias across five European democracies (Britain, Croatia, France, Germany, and Spain), using original surveys and granular contextual data. Our results reveal that perceptions of geographic bias are widespread. Clear majorities see government as biased towards rich areas and capital cities, while around half of respondents perceive bias against rural areas. Perceptions of geographical bias reflect individuals’ location, lack of trust in government, holding populist attitudes, and being more left-wing, but not being a supporter of a populist party. Our results suggest potential for mainstream left/liberal parties, not just populists, to exploit perceptions of bias.

Pollination crisis Down-Under: Has Australasia dodged the bullet?

Since mid-1990s, concerns have increased about a human-induced "pollination crisis." Threats have been identified to animals that act as plant pollinators, plants pollinated by these animals, and consequently human well-being. Threatening processes include loss of natural habitat, climate change, pesticide use, pathogen spread, and introduced species. However, concern has mostly been during last 10-15 years and from Europe and North America, with Australasia, known as Down-Under, receiving little attention. So perhaps Australasia has "dodged the bullet"? We systematically reviewed the published literature relating to the "pollination crisis" via Web of Science, focusing on issues amenable to this approach. Across these issues, we found a steep increase in publications over the last few decades and a major geographic bias towards Europe and North America, with relatively little attention in Australasia. While publications from Australasia are underrepresented, factors responsible elsewhere for causing the "pollination crisis" commonly occur in Australasia, so this lack of coverage probably reflects a lack of awareness rather than the absence of a problem. In other words, Australasia has not "dodged the bullet" and should take immediate action to address and mitigate its own "pollination crisis." Sensible steps would include increased taxonomic work on suspected plant pollinators, protection for pollinator populations threatened with extinction, establishing long-term monitoring of plant-pollinator relationships, incorporating pollination into sustainable agriculture, restricting the use of various pesticides, adopting an Integrated Pest and Pollinator Management approach, and developing partnerships with First Nations peoples for research, conservation and management of plants and their pollinators. Appropriate Government policy, funding and regulation could help.

Author Country of Origin and Attention on Open Science Platforms: Evidence from COVID-19 Preprints

Online platforms such as preprint servers have become an important way to disseminate new scientific knowledge prior to peer review. However, little is known about how attention to preprints may vary across authors from different countries of origin, particularly relative to evaluation in expert-controlled systems such as scientific journals. This study explores how readers allocated attention across preprints in the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when there was an increase in demand for new research and a corresponding increase in the use of preprint platforms around the world. We find that, after controlling carefully for article quality and topic, as well as the prominence of the preprint’s ultimate publication outlet, preprints with authors from Chinese institutions receive less attention, and preprints with authors from U.S. institutions receive more attention, than preprints with authors from the rest of the world. In an exploration of potential mechanisms driving the observed effects, we find evidence that when evaluation is more constrained, in terms of lack of knowledge or expertise and increase in time pressure, audiences tend to make greater use of preprint authors’ country of origin as a proxy for quality or relevance. The results suggest that geographic biases may persist or even be exacerbated on platforms designed to promote unfettered access to early research findings. This paper was accepted by Toby Stuart, entrepreneurship and innovation. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4936 .

Using functional traits to predict pollination services: A review

Pollination is a fundamental ecosystem service. Predictive and mechanistic models linking pollinator community structure to pollination services increasingly incorporate information on unique functional differences among species, so called effects traits. There is little consensus as to which traits are most important in supporting pollination services at either an individual or community level. Here, we synthesise the state of current knowledge regarding the role and efficacy of traits for predicting pollination, as well as the use of different methods for describing the trait structure of pollinator assemblages. We find a wide range of traits are currently used to predict pollination services, including morphological, behavioural and phenological characteristics. However, we show that the evidence demonstrating their importance is often limited or mixed. There is a trade-off in how traits are used between those that are easier to measure, available for many species but have only limited evidence for their role in pollination, vs. those that are harder to measure but with a more robust link with pollination service delivery. We highlight how community weighted means and measures of functional diversity offer important, albeit different insights into pollination service delivery. We discuss how their relative importance is likely to depend on the goals of the study. To maximise fully the utilisation of traits to predict pollination services, future research should be directed towards the widespread and consistent validation of the links among different traits and the pollination service across crop and semi-natural plant communities. Ideally this also needs to address geographical and taxonomic biases in trait collection.

Environmental DNA and RNA in aquatic community ecology: Toward methodological standardization

AbstractMolecular technologies have facilitated the expansion of biodiversity assessments across a broad range of organisms and aquatic systems. Environmental DNA (eDNA) and environmental RNA (eRNA), collectively referred to as environmental nucleic acids (eNAs), have revolutionized biodiversity monitoring due to their noninvasive nature and high‐resolution capabilities when compared to traditional survey methods. While eNA applications have grown exponentially over the past decade, methodological inconsistencies hinder reproducibility and comparability. To assess the current state of eNA methodologies in aquatic ecology, we conducted a systematic review of 300 peer‐reviewed eNA studies that assess ecological communities across diverse aquatic systems. Of these papers, 291 examine eDNA, four examine eRNA, and five consider both eDNA and eRNA. The small number of eRNA studies compared to eDNA highlights the eRNA field is in its infancy. Of the eNA studies looked at, we found a clear geographic bias, with approximately 50% of all eNA studies occurring in six high‐income countries, while less than 10% of eNA studies occur across South America and Africa. Further, we report a lack of methodological standardization across eNA studies, showing high variability in water filtration volume, filter material, filter pore size, eNA extraction method, marker choice, and bioinformatic pipelines. We further highlight that incomplete reference sequence databases for both eRNA and eDNA limit taxonomic assignment and biodiversity inferences. Finally, we identify a systematic issue across eNA studies in community ecology: missing methodological details, which compromise reproducibility, especially in newly emerging eRNA applications. To facilitate the standardization of eNA monitoring across aquatic systems and permit the further integration of eNA applications in biodiversity monitoring, we recommend the improvement of reference databases alongside guidelines that encourage methodological transparency.

Challenging the geographic bias in recognising large‐scale patterns of diversity change

AbstractAimGeographic structure is a fundamental organising principle in ecological and Earth sciences, and our planet is conceptually divided into distinct geographic clusters (e.g. ecoregions and biomes) demarcating unique diversity patterns. Given recent advances in technology and data availability, however, we ask whether geographically clustering diversity time‐series should be the default framework to identify meaningful patterns of diversity change.LocationNorth America.TaxonAves.MethodsWe first propose a framework that recognises patterns of diversity change based on similarities in the behaviour of diversity time‐series, independent of their specific or relative spatial locations. Specifically, we applied an artificial neural network approach, the self‐organising map (SOM), to group time‐series of over 0.9 million observations from the North American Breeding Birds Survey (BBS) data from 1973 to 2016. We then test whether time‐series identified as having similar behaviour are geographically structured.ResultsWe find little evidence of strong geographic structure in patterns of diversity change for North American breeding birds. The majority of the recognised diversity time‐series patterns tend to be indistinguishable from being independently distributed in space.Main ConclusionsOur results suggest that geographic proximity may not correspond to shared temporal trends in diversity; assuming that geographic clustering is the basis for analysis may bias diversity trend estimation. We suggest that approaches that consider variability independently of geographic structure can serve as a useful addition to existing organising rules of biodiversity time‐series.

Rasgos‐CL: A functional trait database of Chilean woody plants

AbstractMotivationDue to language and networking barriers, global initiatives to compile trait data often fail to integrate data from sources in non‐English languages or scientists that largely speak and write in non‐English languages. To illustrate the potential for regional databases to fill gaps in trait data, and how such databases may fill critical gaps in global biodiversity databases, we built the Rasgos‐CL Database. Rasgos‐CL provides a comprehensive set of plant traits for the woody flora of Chile by mobilizing and standardizing unstructured data largely from the Spanish‐language literature. We quantified the gains in trait coverage compared to global trait databases and identified phylogenetic and geographic biases of trait data gaps.Main Types of Variables ContainedRasgos‐CL contains 25,174 trait records, including 2 continuous and 21 categorical traits for 662 woody species.Spatial Location and GrainNational coverage, with species that occur across all ecosystems in continental Chile.Time Period and GrainData were extracted from sources published between 1833 and 2023.Major Taxa and Level of MeasurementRasgos‐CL includes trait data aggregated at the species level for 662 tree and shrub species, and also provides trait records from individual data sources.Software FormatRasgos‐CL includes four csv files. A GitHub repository contains the csv files.

Emerging Adult Resilience to the Early Stages of the COVID-Pandemic: A Systematic Scoping Review.

Human resilience to COVID-19 related stressors remains a pressing concern following the aftereffects of the pandemic and in the face of probable future pandemics. In response, we systematically scoped the available literature (n = 2030 records) to determine the nature and extent of research on emerging adults' adaptive responses to COVID-19 stressors in the early stages of the pandemic. Using a multisystem resilience framework, our narrative review of 48 eligible studies unpacks the personal, relational, institutional and/or physical ecological resources that enabled positive emerging adult outcomes to COVID-18 stressors. We found that there is a geographical bias in studies on this topic, with majority world contexts poorly represented. Resources leading to positive outcomes foregrounded psychological and social support, while institutional and ecological supports were seldom mentioned. Multisystemic combinations of resources were rarely considered. This knowledge has valuable implications for understanding resilience in the context of other large-scale adverse conditions.

Trends and gaps in the study of fire effects on plant–animal interactions in Brazilian ecosystems

AbstractPlant–animal interactions are pervasive in terrestrial ecosystems. They hold relevant ecological information for guiding biodiversity conservation and restoration practices. Despite plant–animal interactions being particularly sensitive to disturbance, the knowledge about how fire, a remarkable driver of changes in ecosystem structure and functioning, affects these relationships is still limited. In this sense, the assessment of how studies investigate the fire effects on plant–animal interactions through a systematic review proves to be relevant to guide future research agenda. In this study, we reviewed studies regarding the effects of fire on plant–animal interactions conducted in Brazil, which hosts many different fire‐prone and fire‐sensitive ecosystems and harbours several plant and animal species. Supported by an integrative database, we summarized the main goals, methodologies, and taxonomic groups used in studies addressing the effects of fire on plant–animal interactions and pointed out some shortfalls that future research should avoid and gaps that they shall fulfil. In sum, 39 studies published from 1995 to 2022 met our criteria of inclusion in the database. Most of them were conducted in Cerrado and mainly evaluated ant–plant or plant–pollinator interactions. In addition, studies were generally designed with inappropriate experimental approaches that commonly disregard relevant fire attributes that are important drivers of ecosystem structure and functioning. Altogether, our review shows that studies evaluating this topic present a geographic and taxonomic bias, which overlooks particular plant–animal interactions, and that we still have a superficial understanding of fire effects on plant–animal interactions in Brazilian ecosystems.

European Taxonomists in Profile: A Data-Driven Approach

This presentation focuses on the service aspect of taxonomy in Europe, encompassing the description, identification, and nomenclature of taxa. This aspect of taxonomy supports all biological research, and working taxonomists contribute to it in different degrees (Dayrat 2005). Taxonomy also serves as a research discipline, emphasising the evolutionary aspects of biodiversity, but this study specifically investigates only the supply of taxonomists as a service and compares this with the demand for taxonomy, which arises from policy that requires information on European biodiversity for development or implementation. To profile taxonomists, we adopt an automated approach using OpenAlex, an open bibliography of scholarly publications, to extract comprehensive data on authors, their affiliated institutions, and their respective taxa of expertise. This automated approach avoids the well-known biases of self-reported questionnaires, thus ensuring robust coverage across all taxa, and minimising potential geographic, gender and demographic biases. In addition to analysing the current availability of taxonomic expertise (supply side), this study explores the gaps in taxonomic expertise by examining significant taxa from research and policy perspectives (demand side). Leveraging datasets such as the list of invasive species on the horizon for Europe (Roy et al. 2018), the Crop Wild Relative Data section of the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System (USDA 2023) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN 2022), we assess the demand for taxonomic expertise. A flow diagram (Fig. 1) illustrates our step-by-step methodology. Beginning with data extraction from OpenAlex, we categorised and analysed more than 650 taxonomic journals published over the past ten years. We filtered these for relevant papers only from European institutions. This resulted in a subset of 31 thousand publications from which we identified 44 thousand authors, and were able to map their taxonomic expertise and their geographic spread. This comprehensive workflow provides detailed demographic data directly derived from bibliographic information, extending on the Red List of Insect Taxonomists (Hochkirch et al. 2022) and enabling repeatable analyses to monitor trends and changes over time. For example, we can track the usage of ORCID identifers by European taxonomists, which we calculate is currently at 64%. By considering the demand side rather than assuming equal policy importance across all taxa, our study offers nuanced insights into the contribution of taxonomists in addressing conservation and policy needs in Europe. Furthermore, by highlighting impacts, challenges, and potential solutions, we underscore the significance of taxonomy as a vital service. The recommendations aim to prioritise taxonomy, enhance its contributions to biodiversity conservation efforts, and provide guidance to policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders invested in sustaining Europe's rich biodiversity.

Global Lepidoptera Index: Progress and Issues with Developing a Comprehensive Global Checklist of Moths and Butterflies

Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) form one of the four largest animal orders, with published estimates that around 174,250 species had been described up to 2009 (Chapman 2009). Many species are conspicuous, charismatic and regularly recorded by citizen scientists. As a result, iNaturalist contains more than 15 million Lepidoptera observations (10.5% of all observations), and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) includes more than 83 million occurrence records for the group from all sources (3.5% of all biodiversity data and 9.8% of all non-bird data). A modern and comprehensive checklist of global moths and butterflies would therefore play a significant role in improving our ability to interpret biodiversity patterns and change. However, there is still no dataset that adequately covers the order, and good accessible digital checklists exist for a minority of families. The Global Lepidoptera Names Index (LepIndex) has served as the primary checklist for Lepidoptera used by Catalogue of Life (COL), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and other global biodiversity informatics initiatives, with selected families sourced for other well-curated projects. LepIndex is the digitised version of a card index developed and maintained over decades at the Natural History Museum, London. Its intended purpose was to link published species names with the original literature references. LepIndex includes most names published prior to around 1985 (with some geographical bias) and additions for some groups up to around 1995. Since the card index was developed purely as a nomenclatural resource, no effort was made to track changes in generic placement and generally reflect taxonomic opinion from the time when each card was added. As a result, binomial combinations in LepIndex do not necessarily reflect either the original author's published binomial or contemporary classification. In superfamilies such as Gelechioidea and Noctuoidea, which have undergone significant reorganisation in the light of modern findings, many names are not associated even with the currently recognised family for the species. LepIndex has been migrated to TaxonWorks and is now maintained as the Global Lepidoptera Index (GLI), but addressing a shortfall of nearly 40 years of active taxonomy and fixing other legacy issues remains a major challenge. COL has recently worked with several groups of taxonomists to develop modern digital checklists for several families, but some groups can only practically be improved through edits to GLI. This presentation will summarise progress and metrics indicating the scale of the remaining task and the effort that will be required to maintain a comprehensive checklist that rapidly and accurates reflects new taxonomic findings.

Multisensory approaches in migration research: reflections and pathways

The rapidly developing field of visual methods and growing body of literature employing visual methodologies in the collection of data have contributed to the acknowledgement of the senses with a prevalence of sight in the research process. Yet, the ‘sensuous scholarship’ is not always considered in the systematic methodological process when visual methodologies are at stake. The aim of this paper is to problematise this stance in the context of the particular field of migration research. Our aim is to ‘de-essentialise the visual’ by presenting cases from our studies on immigrant communities in Norway, Turkey, Israel, and Portugal, and to exemplify how the embodied knowledge gained by both the researcher and research participants can contribute to research findings. We argue that sensuous experiences are part of researchers’ positionality and influence the intellectual outcomes of our work. We support this stance with four claims that relate to a researcher's physical presence in the field. We claim that (1) our work suffers an intellectual bias, (2) our geographical bias influences the interpretation of sensory experiences, (3) we tend to overstudy groups for which we have sympathy/empathy, and (4) the sensing scholar does physical labour. As for the perspective of research participants, we argue that the attention to their sensory experiences may bring knowledge on important aspects of their livelihoods and can give in-depth insight into micro, meso, and macro processes the respondents are entangled with. We claim that (5) senses influence the inclusion-exclusion dynamic, (6) senses are drivers of ethnic boundary maintenance, and (7) emplacement is mediated by senses.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Detecting Online Extremism, Radicalisation, and Politicised Hate Speech

Social media is a modern person’s digital voice to project and engage with new ideas and mobilise communities—a power shared with extremists. Given the societal risks of unvetted content-moderating algorithms forExtremism, Radicalisation,andHate speech(ERH)detection, responsible software engineering must understand the who, what, when, where, and why such models are necessary to protect user safetyandfree expression. Hence, we propose and examine the unique research field ofERH context miningto unify disjoint studies. Specifically, we evaluate the start-to-finish design process from socio-technical definition-building and dataset collection strategies to technical algorithm design and performance. Our 2015–2021 51-studySystematic Literature Review (SLR)provides the first cross-examination of textual, network, and visual approaches to detectingextremistaffiliation,hatefulcontent, andradicalisationtowards groups and movements. We identify consensus-driven ERH definitions and propose solutions to existing ideological and geographic biases, particularly due to the lack of research in Oceania/Australasia. Our hybridised investigation on Natural Language Processing, Community Detection, and visual-text models demonstrates the dominating performance of textual transformer-based algorithms. We conclude with vital recommendations for ERH context mining researchers and propose an uptake roadmap with guidelines for researchers, industries, and governments to enable a safer cyberspace.