Embracing Ignorance: Addressing Global Biodiversity Knowledge Shortfalls Department of Biogeography and Global Change, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN-CSIC)

Ecologists and evolutionary biologists increasingly use massive data to investigate the origin, distribution and dynamics of biodiversity. However, global biodiversity information suffers from gaps, biases, and uncertainty over time and space, afflicting all taxonomic groups. Incomplete or biased data feeds models of biodiversity trends with uncertainty, generating potentially faulty inferences with knock-on effects for conservation efforts. I will introduce an updated framework to understand the limitations of biodiversity knowledge, which: (i) identifies eleven major shortfalls spanning taxonomic, ecological, evolutionary, and biocultural aspects; (ii) provides a general definition for data quality, coverage and bias in each category; and (iii) lines out a way of identifying the financial, taxonomic and technological impediments that have molded the variations in capacity and willingness to collect data across regions and taxa. I provide some examples of how can these shortfalls be quantified, and discuss how can they be addressed in biodiversity research and conservation actions.

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