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As well, the big animals are the ones to which we ascribe value, “and that value may simply be that it’s fluffy and it reminds me of Disney, or it may be economic value (or) food value. There are not many people that are supported day-to-day with insects,” although a few invertebrate marine species such as shellfish have economic value.

In nature, Cooke says invertebrates are often a bridge. They eat small species such as algae, and become food in turn for bigger animals. They also help break down dead material and recycle the nutrients.

People go to Africa to see herds of wildebeest and the big cats that chase them, never giving a thought to the lowly dung beetle, said Jeremy Kerr, an insect scientist from the University of Ottawa. “But you’re going to run out of reasons to go on safari if the dung beetles aren’t doing their job because the productivity of those grasslands will plummet,” and there will be fewer big animals.

Their paper, “Taxonomic bias and international biodiversity conservation research,” is published in a Canadian research journal called FACETS.

Cooke said the study was done largely by students, and without funding. “It was more a case of asking ‘I wonder…’ and then looking at the numbers and boom, there it was,” he said.

The group under lead author Michael Donaldson ran through data on 10,000 species and concludes: “We found extreme bias in conservation research effort on threatened vertebrates compared with lesser-studied invertebrates” both on land and in the water.

In a strange twist, the group got underway and then realized that it had no one on board who actually studies invertebrates. That’s when they added Kerr from the U of O.

It was lucky they did, Cooke said: “Then we had the finding that the invertebrates were the ones that were totally being ignored.”

tspears@postmedia.com

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