Back in 2000 I had voiced my opinion on the subject for an Eartwatch issue. I have attached it here. To tell you the truth, I am even more convinced today of what I said back then. Relating to your question - my answer is "convenience." The other problem is that today academia advocates teaching students to be robots - ask a question, go out there and the answer in order to get your degree. There is no real Naturalist's approach. Hence, natural history studies also suffer and it is impossible today to publish any such, in my eyes VERY important studies, without fancy fangled statistics. Sorry if I got carried away.

Dear prof. Ladle

I am observing that researchers who study species impacting on human activities, such as in agriculture, are much followed and financed; with the same effort, research that deals with insects of natural environments, very important for the study of habitat quality, as well as biodiversity, are often ignored, and this can also be seen in the lower rating.

regards

Estou observando que os pesquisadores que estudam espécies que impactam nas atividades humanas, como na agricultura, são muito seguidos e financiados; com o mesmo esforço, pesquisas que tratam de insetos de ambientes naturais, muito importantes para o estudo da qualidade do habitat, bem como da biodiversidade, são muitas vezes ignoradas, e isso também pode ser visto na classificação mais baixa.

saudações

An oft stated rule in crime investigations is: follow the money. That also applies to research. Unless you are financially independent you have to apply for grants and they are usually earmarked for species of importance, either economically or recreationally. A sad reality is that when many species are listed as endangered, little is known about them becasue they aren't considered important When funds are set aside to study these species, people finally do study them. In a perfect work a scientist would be able to study what every he/she wanted. We live in a world goverend by politics and business interests, and that is usually what dtermines research projects.

Hi Richard,

Your model sounds fascinating. I'll be interested to see what you find. If I can give a shameless plug for a review my coauthors and I recently published, we looked at taxonomic and methodological bias in the field of cooperative breeding theory. Unfortunately we don't really delve into the reasons behind these biases, but if it's of interest to you the link is : Article The Right Tools for the Job: Cooperative Breeding Theory and...

All the best!

Martin

Back in 2000 I had voiced my opinion on the subject for an Eartwatch issue. I have attached it here. To tell you the truth, I am even more convinced today of what I said back then. Relating to your question - my answer is "convenience." The other problem is that today academia advocates teaching students to be robots - ask a question, go out there and the answer in order to get your degree. There is no real Naturalist's approach. Hence, natural history studies also suffer and it is impossible today to publish any such, in my eyes VERY important studies, without fancy fangled statistics. Sorry if I got carried away.

The research on conservation issue centers around mostly the threat assessment of economically important species. Many times an abstract estimation of the range of distribution and population size of species are done. However, important issue the focussed approach regarding the recovery of the species in-situ or studying the propagation method and subsequent establishment in multiple sites ex-situ are hardly attempted. I am a forester by profession and ex-situ conservation of such critically endangered species of Eastern Ghats of India is being carried out for last several years. My Institute is ready to collaborate in such initiatives of conservation of such species.

Dear Doctors, Each of you are interested by researches on biodiversity in sites more or less anthropised, payed by some financial source. It is not my case: I work in completely natural or oldly occupied by agriculture localities. Under northern-Mediterranean climate. It is a fruitfull discovery of many insect species which were never inventoried in such sites. Insects belonging to orders sometimes poorly studied in southern of Europe (for examples: psocids; galligenous Cecidomyiidae, Cynipidae; cockroaches...). It is an unfoundabkle source of scientific papers on habits, behavior of larval and imaginal stadia of species living in Provence (South-eastern France). Many of the species are widespread in Western Europe. My main diffculty is to find enough International reviews for publishing my results, Because for Scientists, benevolate do'nt exists (outside of Scientific Institutes or Universities, any agreement for free researchers). Sincerely yours. [email protected]

Dear prof. Ladle,

I find your question to be a very interesting one, and I'll thus add my own answer to it, as it echos my own motivations.

As a young PhD student, my current goal is to be able to work on wolf conservation in the future. Canis lupus is the kind of species that leaves nobody really indifferent to it, I believe, for the better and for the worst. To me, that explains why so many researchers - but also non-researchers - are very enthousiastic about working on this iconic species, often depicted as a kind of symbol of the "lost wilderness" or wild romantism in western sociesties (if not as a spiritual entity, gardian of nature, etc.).

I'd be lying to myself if I said that this isn't a part of why I want to work on this species in particular. But I'd add to this that as someone who wants to work on conservation research and activities, the wolf is (like many other species) one that presents particular challenges and problematics that makes it fascinating to study.

Mainly, I'd say that the conservation of the wolf is challenging because it impacts a lot of people living in rural areas (and might impact people living in towns, as the coyote already does), just as it is the case for the conservation of great predators. Canis lupus is neither an angel, nor a demon, but a wild, opportunistic animal and predator that is highly mobile and can display adaptive strategies to human means of protections (meaning protection of cheptels at the moment). This means that its conservation, in my opinion, "demands" more from societies than does, say, your average endangered species of spider, crab, jellyfish, plant or bird. If those demands are succefully taken into account by conservation research, and succefully taken care of by conservation activities, I believe that it will open the way to the conservation of many other species that might be less demanding of actions by the population.

I'd agree that my point of view is a very naive and narrow one, and I am trying to extend it as I go on. Yet, I strongly believe that my own motivation is shared by many others, and hope that this will be part of the answer that you are looking for.

I'm looking forward to reading about your model, and wish you a good continuation in your research !

Whereas some are considered keystone species, others are bioindicators. Thus their study in a given ecosystem provide more insight on the dynamics of such systems, at least at community level of interactions.

Like others, I find the methods used in conservation ecology relevant to most species and hence I have followed the money and worked on whatever species someone will pay me to study. I would love to have been able to work on a study system/species for a long period of time, but alas funding hasn't allowed that.