0000000001333926
AUTHOR
Roll, Uri
showing 3 related works from this author
Identifying global hotspots and conservation priorities for reptilian phylogenetic diversity
2018
As we face the current extinction crisis with extremely limited resources for conservation, it is important to consider how we can preserve as much of the tree of life as possible. To date, global assessments of phylogenetic conservation priorities have been conducted for amphibians, birds and mammals. However, a lack of data has previously precluded the incorporation of reptiles-which represent almost a third of terrestrial vertebrate diversity-into such analyses. Here, we present the first global analysis of reptilian phylogenetic conservation priorities. As reptiles are not comprehensively assessed by the IUCN Red List, we employ a combination of species-focused and spatial approaches to…
What are the most popular animals in the world? Using Wikipedia to quantitatively compare interest across 60,000 vertebrates
2018
Species vary widely in their popularity, and these variations in human interest impact conservation. The popularity of a species, for example, may influence the conservation funding that species receives and affect the long-term success of its protection efforts. As a result, understanding what drives interest in species and how it varies across cultural contexts is relevant to conservation. Here we use a ‘big data’ approach to quantitatively compare interest in ca. 60,000 vertebrate species across nearly 300 language editions of Wikipedia---a large, online encyclopedia. We assess how the popularity of a species in Wikipedia, measured in terms of its pageviews, correlates with biological at…
Disentangling homonyms- using artificial neural networks to separate the cream from the crop in large text corpora
2018
Recent years have seen a great influx in scientific publications as well other sources of text corpora that are used for conservation research. This surge holds much promise in promoting great advancements in science, but also presents new challenges. One of the great issues of utilizing this plethora of information is how to efficiently sort through it and retain only its relevant sections. Homonyms - terms that share spelling but differ in meaning - present a unique challenge within this respect as they do not contain inherent information that can aid in their classification across narratives. This issue is of relevance for an array of different conservation culturomics studies, as homony…