Using Wikipedia page views to explore the cultural importance of global reptiles

Journal article

Modern conservation operates at the nexus of biological and social influences. While the importance of social and cultural factors are often mentioned, defining, measuring and comparing them remains a significant challenge. Here, we explore a novel method to quantify cultural interest in all extant reptile species using Wikipedia- a large, open-access online encyclopaedia. We analysed all page views of reptile species viewed during 2014 in all of Wikipedia’s language editions. We compared species’ page view numbers across languages and in relationship to their spatial distribution, phylogeny, threat status and various other biological attributes. We found that while the top three species with respect to page views are shared across major language editions, beyond these, page view ranks of species tend to be specific to particular language editions. Interest within a language is mostly focused on reptiles found in the regions where the language is spoken. Overall, interest is greater for reptiles that are venomous, endangered, widely distributed, larger sized and that have been described earlier. However, within individual families not all the above factors predict page views. Most families contain at least one species in the top 5% of page views, but 29 families (with 1450 species) have no ‘high interest species’ in them. Overall, our analyses elucidate novel patterns of human interests in nature over large geographical, cultural and taxonomic spectra using big-data techniques. Such approaches hold much promise for incorporating social perceptions in future conservation practices.

Authors: Roll, U; Mittermeier, J; Diaz, G; Novosolov, M; Feldman, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Journal: Biological Conservation
• Volume: 204
• Issue: A
• Pages: 42-50
• Publication date: 2016-05-04
• Acceptance date: 2016-03-30
• DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2016.03.037
• ISSN: 1873-2917
• Keywords: SBTMR; culture; language; endangered; conservation; big data; flagship species