Global disparity in public awareness of the biological control potential of invertebrates

Kris Wyckhuys; Gabor Pozsgai; Gabor Lovei; Liette Vasseur; Steve Wratten; Geoff Gurr; Olivia Reynolds; Mark Goettel

doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.27238v1

Global disparity in public awareness of the biological control potential of invertebrates

Kris Wyckhuys ^1,2,3,4, Gabor Pozsgai², Gabor Lovei^2,5, Liette Vasseur^2,6, Steve Wratten^2,7, Geoff Gurr^2,8, Olivia Reynolds^2,8,9, Mark Goettel^2,10

1 School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

2 International Joint Research Laboratory on Ecological Pest Management, Fuzhou, China

3 Institute of Plant Protection, China Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China

4 Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University (浙江大学化工系), Hangzhou, China

5 Aarhus University, Slagelse, Denmark

6 Brock University, Saint Catharines, Canada

7 Lincoln University, Lincoln, New Zealand

8 Graham Centre for Agricultural Innovation, Wagga Wagga, Australia

9 New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, Narellan, Australia

10 Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge, Canada

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.27238v1

Published: 2018-09-26
Accepted: 2018-09-26

Subject Areas: Agricultural Science, Ecology, Computational Science, Coupled Natural and Human Systems, Spatial and Geographic Information Science
Keywords: functional biodiversity, agro-ecology, ecological intensification, ecosystem services, Big Data, pest management, public perception, computational science

Licence: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.

Cite this article: Wyckhuys K, Pozsgai G, Lovei G, Vasseur L, Wratten S, Gurr G, Reynolds O, Goettel M. 2018. Global disparity in public awareness of the biological control potential of invertebrates. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27238v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27238v1

Abstract

Invertebrates make up 97-99% of biodiversity on Earth and contribute to multiple ecosystem services (ES) in both natural and human-dominated systems. One such service, biological control (BC) of herbivorous pests, is a core component of sustainable intensification of agriculture, yet its importance is routinely overlooked. Here we report a macro-scale, cross-cultural assessment of the public visibility (or ‘awareness’) of BC invertebrates, using high-throughput analysis of large bodies of digitized text. Using binomial scientific name frequency as proxy for awareness, we compared the extent to which a given species featured in webpages within either scientific media or the entire worldwide web, and in total search volume at varying spatial scale. For a set of 339 BC invertebrate species, scientific and internet coverage averaged 1,020 and 1,735 webpages, respectively. Substantial variability was recorded among BC taxa with Coleoptera, Hemiptera and Nematoda having comparatively high visibility. Online visibility exhibited large geographical variability ranging from France covering BC invertebrates on average in 1,050 webpages versus USA on just 31. This work represents the first extensive use of culturomics to assess public visibility of insect-mediated ES. As BC uptake is dictated by stakeholders’ access to (agro-ecological) information, our work identifies geographically-delineated areas that are differentially attuned to the concept of invertebrate BC, pinpoints opportunities for focusing education campaigns and awareness-raising, enables real-time tracking of BC public appeal, and informs public policy.

Author Comment

This is a preprint submission to PeerJ