New bird app spreads its wings

Date:
April 21, 2022
Source:
University of Queensland
Summary:
Researchers have helped design an app to protect birds at risk
of extinction across the world by breaking down language barriers
between scientists.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Researchers from The University of Queensland have helped design an app
to protect birds at risk of extinction across the world by breaking down language barriers between scientists.


==========================================================================
The Bird Language Diversity web app
(https://translatesciences.shinyapps.io/ bird_language_diversity/) will
help provide a "birds eye view," ensuring vital information is shared
to improve worldwide conservation.

UQ's Dr Pablo Negret said the research team analysed more than 10,000
bird species, and found that 1587 species have 10 languages or more
spoken within their distributions.

"Scientific information on species can be scattered across different
languages, and valuable information can go missing or get lost in
translation," Dr Negret said.

"Without adequate sharing of information, this can compromise the
effectiveness of conservation measures.

"Take the common pochard bird for example; it is classified as vulnerable
and spans 108 countries in Europe, Russia, Asia and north Africa, where
a total of 75 official languages are spoken.



==========================================================================
"The survival of the common pochard, and so many other species, depends
on effective collaboration and policy agreements among people with
diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds." "This app reveals where threatened and migratory birds exist geographically, in relation to the language spoken in those regions," Dr Negret said.

"Simply select a language to see the number of bird species that live
within that language zone, or compare the impact of that language on
bird species globally.

"We hope the app will incentivise researchers and conservation
organisations to interact with their peers in other regions, especially
if they speak different languages, and be a starting point to allow
everyone to work together to protect threatened species." UQ researcher
and co-author of paper, Dr Tatsuya Amano, said this work could extend
further than bird species.



==========================================================================
"Any species, whether it's mammals, amphibians, or plants, with a range spanning multiple countries will be impacted by language barriers, as
will species that migrate across different countries, such as marine
species and butterflies," Dr Amano said.

"The magnitude of the impact of poor communication on such an important
issue is evident, and is the reason why we're working hard to improve
science communication across languages." Dr Amano said positive steps had
been taken in recent years to lower the language barrier and facilitate improved science communication, but there was still room for improvement.

"The scientific community is certainly becoming better at overcoming
these barriers, and many academic journals have recently changed their
policies to become more language inclusive," he said.

"But the issue is still largely overlooked, so we really hope our most
recent work will shed more light on the importance of overcoming these
barriers to better conserve life on Earth." This research is published
in PLOS ONE.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Queensland. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Pablo Jose Negret, Scott C. Atkinson, Bradley K. Woodworth, Marina
Corella Tor, James R. Allan, Richard A. Fuller, Tatsuya
Amano. Language barriers in global bird conservation. PLOS ONE,
2022; 17 (4): e0267151 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267151 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220421094142.htm

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