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Differences among Major Taxa in the Extent of Ecological Knowledge across Four Major Ecosystems

Existing knowledge shapes our understanding of ecosystems and is critical for ecosystem-based management of the world's natural resources. Typically this knowledge is biased among taxa, with some taxa far better studied than others, but the extent of this bias is poorly known. In conjunction wi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Fisher, Rebecca, Knowlton, Nancy, Brainard, Russell E., Caley, M. Julian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3206803/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22073172
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0026556
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author Fisher, Rebecca
Knowlton, Nancy
Brainard, Russell E.
Caley, M. Julian
author_facet Fisher, Rebecca
Knowlton, Nancy
Brainard, Russell E.
Caley, M. Julian
author_sort Fisher, Rebecca
collection PubMed
description Existing knowledge shapes our understanding of ecosystems and is critical for ecosystem-based management of the world's natural resources. Typically this knowledge is biased among taxa, with some taxa far better studied than others, but the extent of this bias is poorly known. In conjunction with the publically available World Registry of Marine Species database (WoRMS) and one of the world's premier electronic scientific literature databases (Web of Science®), a text mining approach is used to examine the distribution of existing ecological knowledge among taxa in coral reef, mangrove, seagrass and kelp bed ecosystems. We found that for each of these ecosystems, most research has been limited to a few groups of organisms. While this bias clearly reflects the perceived importance of some taxa as commercially or ecologically valuable, the relative lack of research of other taxonomic groups highlights the problem that some key taxa and associated ecosystem processes they affect may be poorly understood or completely ignored. The approach outlined here could be applied to any type of ecosystem for analyzing previous research effort and identifying knowledge gaps in order to improve ecosystem-based conservation and management.
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spelling pubmed-32068032011-11-09 Differences among Major Taxa in the Extent of Ecological Knowledge across Four Major Ecosystems Fisher, Rebecca Knowlton, Nancy Brainard, Russell E. Caley, M. Julian PLoS One Research Article Existing knowledge shapes our understanding of ecosystems and is critical for ecosystem-based management of the world's natural resources. Typically this knowledge is biased among taxa, with some taxa far better studied than others, but the extent of this bias is poorly known. In conjunction with the publically available World Registry of Marine Species database (WoRMS) and one of the world's premier electronic scientific literature databases (Web of Science®), a text mining approach is used to examine the distribution of existing ecological knowledge among taxa in coral reef, mangrove, seagrass and kelp bed ecosystems. We found that for each of these ecosystems, most research has been limited to a few groups of organisms. While this bias clearly reflects the perceived importance of some taxa as commercially or ecologically valuable, the relative lack of research of other taxonomic groups highlights the problem that some key taxa and associated ecosystem processes they affect may be poorly understood or completely ignored. The approach outlined here could be applied to any type of ecosystem for analyzing previous research effort and identifying knowledge gaps in order to improve ecosystem-based conservation and management. Public Library of Science 2011-11-02 /pmc/articles/PMC3206803/ /pubmed/22073172 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0026556 Text en This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Public Domain declaration, which stipulates that, once placed in the public domain, this work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose.
spellingShingle Research Article
Fisher, Rebecca
Knowlton, Nancy
Brainard, Russell E.
Caley, M. Julian
Differences among Major Taxa in the Extent of Ecological Knowledge across Four Major Ecosystems
title Differences among Major Taxa in the Extent of Ecological Knowledge across Four Major Ecosystems
title_full Differences among Major Taxa in the Extent of Ecological Knowledge across Four Major Ecosystems
title_fullStr Differences among Major Taxa in the Extent of Ecological Knowledge across Four Major Ecosystems
title_full_unstemmed Differences among Major Taxa in the Extent of Ecological Knowledge across Four Major Ecosystems
title_short Differences among Major Taxa in the Extent of Ecological Knowledge across Four Major Ecosystems
title_sort differences among major taxa in the extent of ecological knowledge across four major ecosystems
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3206803/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22073172
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0026556
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