Mid-May is the peak of the season in Northeast Ohio for birdwatchers hoping to see the array of birds on their travels northward. However, a new study from the University of Toledo finds that attention is more often focused on the pretty birds, and less eye-catching species tend to fall by the wayside, but not just for birdwatchers.
Birds that are colorful, iridescent or have fancy plumage are researched as much as three times as often compared to more run of the mill birds, according to the report.
"This tells us that essentially researchers are choosing to study more aesthetically appealing birds," PhD Candidate and Lead Researcher Silas Fischer said.
The study was inspired in part by Fischer's own work with Gray Vireos, a dusty-colored songbird native to the Southwestern desert, but also by sentiments they observed while out birdwatching.
"Whenever I'm birding around other people, I often hear people make comments like, 'Oh, are you seeing anything good today?'" Fisher said. "If you're not responding with, like, a really bright, flashy warbler in breeding plumage, you kind of get 'Oh, like, okay, whatever.'"
Fischer, along with a team of other doctoral students and University of Toledo professors, combed through the research database Web of Science to determine what attributes make a bird "visually appealing" to people.
"People tend to be drawn more towards birds that have like blue, yellow, and green in their plumage, birds that are iridescent, so kind of have that like shiny factor," Fischer said. "Birds that are larger tend to be more attractive to humans, based on previous scientific research, [and] species that have like any kind of extra ornaments, so like maybe a crest or a really long tail."
The team compared this information to gain insight on the number of research studies published for each of the 293 songbird species, Fischer said.
"There are 10 species that were never researched, at least weren't indexed in the Web of Science, and then there were some species that we're studied almost 600 times," they said.
From a scientific perspective, this bias puts under-researched birds at risk, especially when it comes to conservation efforts, Fischer said..
"We often lack even baseline information about their population trends," they said. "We might not even be able to assess their conservation status, so whether they're endangered or threatened."
This bias can limit one's view of the natural world, Fischer said. The report should remind scientists to check their biases before starting their research.
Fischer suggests birdwatchers can help address the research bias.
"It's all connected to public interest as well," Fisher said "Whether they're a scientist or not, can do their part in maybe just paying a little bit of extra attention to something you might not normally look at."
