Trends in animal translocation research

Abstract

Translocations are an important conservation tool that enable the restoration of species and their ecological functions. They are particularly important during the current environmental crisis. We used a combination of text-analysis tools to track the history and evolution of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on animal translocation science. We compared this corpus with research showcased in the IUCNs Global Conservation Translocation Perspectives, a curated collection of non-peer-reviewed reintroduction case studies. We show that the peer-reviewed literature, in its infancy, was dominated by charismatic species. It then grew in two classical threads: management of the species of concern and management of the environment of the species. The peer-reviewed literature exhibits a bias towards large charismatic mammals, and while these data are invaluable, expansion to under-represented groups such as insects and reptiles will be critical to combating biodiversity loss across taxonomic groups. These biases were similar in the Translocation Perspectives, but with some subtle differences. To ensure translocation science can address global issues, we need to overcome barriers that restrict this research to a limited number of countries.

Trends in Austral Ecology publications 2021 and 2022

“…We used a combination of modern text-analysis tools to identify patterns of research in articles published in Austral Ecology in 2021 and 2022 (n = 231 articles; Andrew et al, 2022;Chandelier et al, 2018;Evans et al, 2021Evans et al, , 2022Evans et al, , 2023Luiz et al, 2019;Millard et al, 2020;Nunez-Mir et al, 2016;Westgate et al, 2015). First, we used topic modelling (Roberts et al, 2014) to classify the articles in our corpus into dominant topics (Westgate et al, 2015).…”

“…We accompanied topic modelling with two other text-analysis techniques: taxonomic entity extraction and geoparsing (Chamberlain & Szöcs, 2013;Evans et al, 2022Evans et al, , 2023Millard et al, 2020). Taxonomic entity extraction involves scanning the text of each article to find | 1051 FORUM taxonomic names that can be matched with a database of taxonomic names.…”

Herding the Literature: Trends in Large Mammalian Herbivore Grazing and Foraging Ecology Research over the Past Three Decades

“…This can, in turn, cause the movement of researchers across the globe and changes in researchers' focus (e.g., Westgate et al 2015 ;Subbotin and Aref 2021 ). With the development of new methods for text analysis and their applications in ecology ( Westgate et al 2015 ;Andrew et al 2022 ;Evans et al 2022Evans et al , 2023, we see it as an ideal opportunity to review the fields of grazing and foraging ecology as they pertain to ungulates broadly and livestock in particular.…”

The research landscape of direct, sensory human–nature interactions

“…We used a combination of modern text-analysis tools to identify patterns of research through time and space (Andrew et al, 2021;Chandelier et al, 2018;Evans et al, 2021Evans et al, , 2022Evans et al, , 2023Luiz et al, 2019;Millard et al, 2020;Nunez-Mir et al, 2016;Westgate et al, 2015). These tools offer alternative ways to analyse corpora to traditional systematic or narrative-driven reviews.…”

“…First, we used topic modelling (Roberts et al, 2014), a type of machine learning, to classify the articles in a collated set of articles (corpus) about human-nature interactions into dominant topics and to reveal their popularities, trajectories and similarities (Westgate et al, 2015). We then combined topic modelling with both geoparsing and taxonomic entity extraction (Chamberlain & Szöcs, 2013;Evans et al, 2022Evans et al, , 2023Millard et al, 2020), tools that, respectively, allow the extraction of geographic location data and taxonomic mentions from the text. Throughout, we highlight key knowledge gaps and recommendations for further research.…”