Animal species underrepresented: Researchers: Emojis should better represent species diversity

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Nature’s biodiversity is not represented in sufficient detail, and some groups of animals and plants are seriously underrepresented, an Italian research team writes in the journal “iScience”.

Biologists argue that increasing diversity in nature emojis will make people more aware of the importance of species conservation. “While the biodiversity crisis may seem far removed from the online world, we should not underestimate the potential of emojis to raise awareness and appreciation of the diversity of life on Earth, “promoting this diversity” in our increasingly digital society, write the researchers, led by Gentile Francesco Ficetola from the University of Milan.

For their study, they looked at Emojipedia, an online reference work for emojis, and cataloged all images related to animals, plants and nature. Their conclusion: Animals are fairly well represented, but plants, fungi, and microorganisms are only very poorly represented. But even among animals, some groups are underrepresented or only superficially depicted. While there are plenty of vertebrate-related emojis, there is a lack of arthropods such as insects, crustaceans, and spiders. This is despite the fact that there are many more arthropod species in nature than vertebrates.

The research team counted emojis from 92 animals, 16 plants, a fungus (possibly a fly agaric) and a microorganism (possibly the gut bacterium Escherichia coli). When it comes to animals, there is also an imbalance in the accuracy of how individual animals are depicted. That’s why there are emojis that clearly represent a bald eagle or a giant panda. Other animal species, such as ants, fish, and crocodiles, are depicted only in very simplified form.

This bias is consistent with the current lack of public awareness of biodiversity, the researchers said. For something to become an emoji, it usually needs to be searched a certain number of times on Google. Only then are animals or plants added to the catalog at irregular intervals.

However, according to biologists, a slight change in the diversity of emojis has been observed in the last seven years. They examined Emojipedia updates from 2015 to 2022. While there were only 45 animal emojis in 2015, this number increased to 92 in 2022. The number of plant emojis has also increased.

(SDA)

Source : Blick