Taxonomic bias persists in ecology and evolution research despite decades of concern

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 research field and its potential changes over time remains 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 the prevalence of studies on vertebrates in the literature as a whole (but not within some pockets of ecology and evolution) has remained similar since the early 2000s, when the first studies of taxonomic bias were published. We also observed that studies on vertebrates, relative to those on invertebrates, were more prevalent in higher impact journals and, within journals, received more 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 targeted actions to ameliorate taxonomic imbalances in ecology and evolution.