The continent of Africa is brimming with wildlife. The United Nations Environment Programme wrote in a 2016 report:
The biomes of Africa range from mangroves to deserts, Mediterranean to tropical woods, temperate to subtropical and mountainous grasslands and savannas, and even ice-capped mountains.
A quarter of the world’s plant and animal species are located in this continent.
However, biodiversity is not only lovely. We require it for survival. Diverse species and biomes offer humans with ecological services, including food, clothing, drinking water, and air. A apparently insignificant animal, such as a certain kind of bee, may cause the extinction of certain plant species. In turn, this impacts people and other creatures.
Experts believe that by 2030, each country must protect 30 percent of its territory’s biodiversity to at least reduce the effects of continuous environmental devastation.
However, a recent study revealed that vast swaths of Africa remain unexplored and their species unreported. Why? Because scientists continue to return to areas whose biodiversity has previously been catalogued rather than exploring uncharted regions.
At the current rate of exploration, it could take over 150 years to visit every 100km x 100km area in Africa even once. And, according to our analysis, a single visit will not suffice. It may take up to 27 missions to document only 50 percent of a region’s species.
Thousands of new species will remain unreported if scientists do not begin to venture beyond well-mapped regions. Identifying and establishing species borders, comprehending regional biodiversity trends, and effectively promoting species protection all require adequate data. We cannot safeguard what we do not understand.
ASSESSING THE DATA
All of the uncolored regions on these maps of Africa represent regions where no scientific missions were discovered. Authors provided
Our estimations are based solely on birds, mammals, and amphibians, three groups that have been extensively investigated. Other existing under-described groups, such as plants, fungi, and insects, are anticipated to have far worse knowledge bias and geographic patterns.
We desired to create images of the continent’s unstudied or understudied regions using data. Typically, when scientists travel to the field, they collect specimens that wind up in museums and then appear in the databases of those museums. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility has consolidated these databases into one so that all the data sets can be viewed at once.
This meant that we counted scientific excursions, which is a more accurate picture of species mapping than, for example, researchers’ tales or a random sampling of journal articles.
To estimate the number of trips in each 100km x 100km grid cell across Africa, we counted the number of years with at least one collection of amphibians, mammals, or birds. This is a conventional strategy for doing analyses of this type. Thus, a number of five, for example, indicates that scientists made collections in five separate years.
Then, we utilized statistical tools that model the future trend based on the current rate if the behavior (the rate of expeditions) remains same.
Our findings demonstrate that present practices for classifying and mapping African biodiversity are insufficient. This can lead to erroneous and self-reinforcing conservation priorities: regions are deemed to have high conservation value mostly because they are better surveyed, not because they are genuinely more diverse.
PUSHING FOR CHANGE
There are ways to remedy the current problem.
Research-funding agencies, corporations, and philanthropists should actively promote studies that attempt to sample areas missing baseline biodiversity data.
In the meanwhile, researchers should broaden the taxonomic and methodological breadth of their collection activities. Given the logistical and legal challenges of conducting fieldwork across the majority of Africa, we urge scientists to collaborate with specialists from different institutions and diverse taxonomic expertise to sample the greatest number of taxa responsibly – either in full or as tissue samples, particularly for endangered or large species.
There is also a need for scientists to collaborate across boundaries. The majority of biological sampling in Africa has been conducted by European and North American institutions. Instead of relying solely on locals as field assistants, researchers from these institutions must interact with regional universities.
To stimulate and facilitate biodiversity study, the government of each country in the continent should make the sample permission application procedure clear and available online.
»Africa’s biodiversity: We cannot safeguard what we do not understand«