Taxonomic bias: a persistent issue in ecology and evolution

Pietro Pollo, Michael M. Kasumovic

Scientific hyperfocus on certain organisms slows innovation and hinders the generality of ecological and evolutionary inference. Yet, the extent of taxonomic bias in this field and its potential changes over time remain poorly quantified. By assessing 1,383,803 papers and 612 journals, we show that ecology and evolution research is strongly taxonomically biased. We found that studies on vertebrates, relative to those on invertebrates, (1) became more frequent over time, (2) were more prevalent in higher impact journals, and (3) received a greater number of citations and mentions in the media. However, classifying animals into more specific groups led to context-dependent temporal and attention patterns. We propose a series of urgent affirmative actions to ameliorate taxonomic imbalances in ecology and evolution.