There are many fish in the sea, but according to research, “ugly” fish also deserve love.
Fish that people rate as the most aesthetically pleasing are also those that appear to need the least conservation support, while fish that are most likely to be classified as “ugly” are the most endangered species, the study found. .
“We need to make sure that our ‘natural’ aesthetic biases do not become biased towards conservation efforts,” said Nicolas Muque, a community ecologist at the University of Montpellier and one of the study’s lead authors. This mismatch between aesthetic value and vulnerability to extinction could have long-term consequences, he said.
Mouquet’s team first conducted an online survey in which 13,000 members of the public assessed the aesthetic appeal of 481 photos of reef fish with ray fins. The researchers submitted the data to an artificial intelligence system, allowing them to generate estimates of how people would likely rate a total of 2,417 of the most common reef fish species from 4,400 different images.
The combined results suggest that bright, colorful and rounded fish species – such as the queen angel and the striped cow – are most often rated as more “beautiful”. But they were also less “evolutionarily different” species – meaning they were more genetically similar to other fish.
The queen angel is rated as more aesthetically pleasing. “Our study highlights probably important discrepancies between potential public support for conservation and the species that need it most,” Muke said. Photo: Georgette Douwma / Getty Images
Fish species that are lower in the aesthetic rankings and considered “uglier” by the public – usually “black” fish, Mouquet notes, with an elongated body shape and no clearly defined color patterns, such as the telescope or round herring – were also more environmentally friendly, with greater environmental risk and listed as “endangered” in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
More “unattractive” species have adapted to look this way because they often live in the water column and have to hide in a more homogeneous habitat, but this also makes them more commercially interesting and more likely to be caught, according to a study published in PLOS Biology.
“Our study highlights probably important discrepancies between potential public support for conservation and the species that need it most,” Muke said. He noted that conservation bias has been documented for many different species – for example, vertebrates are much more represented in research than invertebrates – and aesthetic value is often an important major factor in these preferences.
“Species such as clownfish and colored parrots are definitely the easiest to connect with humans, and it makes sense why they are often used as a figure in conservation efforts,” said Chloe Nash, a marine fish biogeography researcher at the University of Chicago. did not participate in the study. “But most of the fish biodiversity actually consists of species that would not be considered ‘aesthetically beautiful.'”
While aesthetics is recognized as a major ecosystem service, it is often underestimated because of its effect on policy and conservation decisions, said Joan Iverson Nassauer, a landscape ecologist at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study. “This study clearly quantifies the power of aesthetic experience to influence science and governance,” Nassauer said. In future research, to avoid simplification, it would be useful to consider how test participants would rank fish in their landscape context in the wild and in their natural size, she said.
According to Muke, discoveries like these can help researchers understand the “intangible aspects of biodiversity” that make up what scientists call “nature’s contribution to humans” – the harmful and beneficial effects of the natural world on people’s quality of life. Further research in this area could help scientists better anticipate the consequences of species loss, he said, and develop appropriate communication strategies to address the issue with the public, politicians, conservation NGOs and even other researchers.
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