Yesterday a new carnivorous mammal was described from Andean Ecuador (Bassaricyon neblina; the BBC has an excellent write up about it), and it’s been getting a lot of media attention. While I’m happy whenever the work of a taxonomist gets talked about, I have a suspicion that cute, fuzzy things get a greater proportion of that attention.
I pointed out on Twitter that while the one new mammal got international attention, 8 new skink species, 5 new sponges, 4 new water mites, a new fresh water shrimp, a new nematode and a new caddisfly, along with 8 new species of plants (and these were just the species published in Zootaxa & Phytotaxa) were described without much, if any, fan fare.
After my grumpy little observation, Rachel Graham (@PictureEcology) made an interesting suggestion:
@BioInFocus I completely agree with you, but it seems that new mammals are also much less frequently described.
— Rachel Graham (@PictureEcology) August 15, 2013
That got me thinking: is it our attraction to cute things that puts them in the news, or, thanks to more attention in the past and fewer species in total to be found, that describing a new mammal is so unusual that it’s newsworthy? So, I looked into it a little, did some back-of-the-napkin calculations, and tried to see why we seem to hear about some new organisms more than others.
Now, before I get into it, let me state that this is a very rough approximation of the taxonomic literature based on a few hours of quick searching, and I’m 100% confident that I’ve not found every relevant paper. This is just for fun, and should be taken with a pretty large grain boulder of salt. That being said, I think it’s suggestive of what’s happening, and at the very least might jump start some conversation. Also, this is only taking into account new, living (i.e. not fossil) species described in 2012, so beware small sample size distortion.
According to this Wikipedia list, there were 34 new species of mammals (Class Mammalia — ~5.5k described species) described in 2012 (the fact that there’s an updated list of newly described mammal taxa on Wikipedia would seem to lend credence to a Mammal Bias, but I digress): 16 bats, 9 rodents, 4 marsupials, 3 primates and 2 shrew-like things. Some of those, like Cercopithecus lomamiensis, got some media attention, while the others didn’t (I don’t recall hearing much excitement over the new bats, rats and shrews for example).
Who doesn’t love this face? Cercopithecus lomamiensis, one of the bigger taxonomy stories of 2012.
Now what if we look at other, less cuddly groups of organisms? Like sponges (Phylum Porifera — ~9k described species) for example. I found 54 new species of sponge described in 2012, which is a fairly similar ratio of new:known as mammals. I may be mistaken, but I can’t recall seeing a sponge on the home page of any news agencies (although the Lyre Sponge — Chondrocladia lyra — was selected by ASU as one of the Top 10 New Species of 2012).
Same story with harvestmen (Order Opiliones — ~6.5k described species): I located 46 new species for 2012, which is a few more than the mammals, but I kind of doubt there were reporters knocking on arachnidologist’s doors inquiring about them.
Finally, let’s look at rotifers (Phylum Rotifera — ~2.2k described species), those neat little creatures that whirl around in pond water. In 2012, as far as I can tell, only 1 new species was described. One. As far as rarity of discovery goes, it doesn’t get much more unusual than that, and I think it’s safe to assume no one heard about Paraseison kisfaludyi, even though it sounds pretty interesting (it’s only the fourth species described in it’s Order, and it lives INSIDE the carapace of a tiny crustacean — seriously cool).
I think we can safely say that while mammals may indeed be infrequently described, that’s not the reason they make the news, and that we’re all saps for those large eyes and furry bodies that remind us of Rover, Kitty, and ultimately, ourselves.
So, is there a distinct Mammal Bias in the news media? Probably. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not. While it’d be nice to see some of the other new & fascinating creatures being described by the world’s taxonomists be spotlighted, as long as people are reminded we still don’t know our neighbours very well, and that there are a lot of dedicated people out there working hard to introduce them to us, then I think we’re making progress.
It’s not like newly described invertebrates don’t make the news cycle (a couple of recently described dance flies were getting some attention earlier in the week thanks to some good-spirited nomenclature), it’s just that there’s a whole world of interesting biology and taxonomy waiting to be told outside of the cuddly stuff. All you need to do is look.
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Quick footnote with an anecdote: the number of people involved in the description of a new mammal species heavily outweighs the number of people involved with the invertebrate groups I looked at. For the 34 mammal species described in 2012, 107 people were listed as authors on the papers (3.14 people/new species); Opiliones – 26 authors for 46 species (0.57 people/new species); rotifers – 2 authors for 1 species; and sponges – ~35 authors (I lost count) for 54 species (~0.65 people/new species). I’m not really sure what this means (if anything) other than we could really use more taxonomists working on invertebrates, but I thought it was interesting.
I love it! Spoken like a true entomologist. What always shocks me about new mammal species is how they possibly avoided detection all this time — with few exceptions they’re much bigger than invertebrates. I think at some level we’re all surprised when there’s a new mammal: “What do you mean, we missed one?”
There are a lot of elements at play here and I’m not suggesting you’re naive enough to not know how these things work but I don’t think ‘cuteness’ is the sole reason for what ends up making the mass media coverage.
Firstly, I imagine very few news desks comb the literature you have to find new species stories. It’s more passive than that and it depends on the researcher. Many probably don’t even knock up a press release following a new discovery and I imagine a lot of press offices act as a filter for discoveries that just don’t have enough of a hook to get coverage. Then there’s the narrative that comes with the description. In the case of Bassaricyon neblina it had that juicy, normally ‘dusty’ museum drawer discovery plus there were nice images to accompany the story. I imagine a number of the unreported descriptions you mentioned were just plain old discoveries in the line of duty. Also, it is important to bear in mind animals that people know. Yesterdays story was a bit of a stretch given the common confusion over what is meant by carnivore and unless there’s something headline worthy (biggest gonads, largest, smallest, rarest, first, last, new species found in a garden) a new sponge or bat (most people probably couldn’t name more than one kind of bat after vampire bat) just isn’t going to get the clicks or the coverage.
And I don’t disagree with you. Some of these perhaps should have got more mass media coverage and you’ve not included palaeontological discoveries that would significantly bump the stats for the groups you’ve mentioned.
Perhaps a complementary analysis would be to look at how many of the describers of the new taxa in 2012 used social media, which is a way to bypass the filtering of press offices and editors. to announce or disseminate their discoveries. I imagine not many did, which could be taken to signify how some of these new discoveries at least go ‘unreported’. In today’s world you have to be out there, to create the stories yourself.
You’re correct, the media isn’t going to be trolling the taxonomic literature for every new species, and like you mentioned, every new species, while important, isn’t necessarily of popular interest. This post was largely just a reflection on why mammals (and other vertebrates as well) seem to get more attention than other groups.
Taxonomists are quite blasé about the new species they describe, and could do a better job of sharing them after publication, whether through traditional media or social media. While not every species will go viral, I do believe that every new species description has an interesting story to tell, it just might take a some extra work to draw it out. There’s a reason that every taxonomist works on the group that they do, and I think that as a community they could do a better job of sharing their passion rather than assuming nobody cares.
As for alt & social metrics of the taxonomic literature, that would be interesting to look into!
There is a definite megafauna bias in new species reporting, Morgan. Just as there is in everything else in biology. And if not megafauna, then vertebrate bias. And if not vertebrate bias, then anthropomorphism bias. It all comes back to what people generally consider to be important, and that is big things that people can relate to because they are similar to humans in some way.