PREreview of Drab and distant birds are studied less than their fancy-feathered friends

Summary and Strengths

This study examines attributes that affect the selection of birds as study species and its subsequent impact on conservation funding and the perceived value of that species. The authors are particularly interested in biases that arise due to human visual preferences. They hypothesized that birds with greater aesthetic salience, geographic accessibility, and familiarity have been more well-studied than their counterparts. The authors conducted a bibliometric analysis of North American passerine/near-passerine birds that were the primary focal species for book and journal articles published between 1965 and 2020. Aligning with their hypothesis, the results indicate that species at the higher end of these attributes are more documented in publications.  

The manuscript details the complex feedbacks between ornithological research, visual preference, conservation efforts and funding decisions, revealing how scientific bias accumulates. This study is the starting point for many more that explore other attributes of bird selection (behavior, value, vocalization) and a greater range of bird sizes and geographic ranges. The reviewers found the article to be interesting and novel as well as readable to a wide range of audiences. We would recommend this article for publication following minor revisions (as outlined below).    

Major issues

• The reviewers have not identified any major issues with the manuscript.  

Minor issues

• The reviewers suggest renaming the acronym for Aesthetic Salience Score (ASS) to one that is not potentially distracting. We suggest replacing score with value (i.e., ASV), using AS score, or another similar acronym. 

• Although interesting and descriptive, the reviewers find paragraph 1 in the introduction to be unnecessary, and we believe that starting with the second paragraph may help the reader to clearly connect the issue of human value judgments and study species selection/conservation. Descriptive context from paragraph 1 may be integrated into other parts of the manuscript, such as discussing color preference in the methods since it was used to determine the aesthetic salience score. 

• The reviewers would find it helpful if the authors would move Supplementary Table 1 to the main text. Much of the methods are referenced in the Supplementary Materials, which makes it difficult for the reader to know what and how aesthetic salience was measured. 

• The reviewers would find it helpful if the authors included a list of bird species considered in the study in the Supplementary Materials. 

• The reviewers suggest removing some unnecessary added context that distracts from their main argument. For example, we suggest removing/shortening the final paragraph in the discussion to free up space and add more detail within (1) the methods since a lot of the design is described in the supplemental materials, or (2) the conclusion to reinforce their claims. 

• The reviewers recommend that the authors include limitations or alternative explanations in their Discussion to aid their argument. Some items we considered that weren’t explicitly addressed include: 1) Is the location of a university a good measure of accessibility? Researchers often travel long distances to observe their study species. For example, a bird species could be within range of 10 universities but perhaps none of the researchers at those universities study that particular bird. 2) What is the impact of the geographic scope of this project, such as if the range were expanded to the tropics? How would a bird species’ scores adjust, if at all? 

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.