Rare Species Are Valued Big Time
Rare Species Are Valued Big Time
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0005215
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发表时间：
2009-04-22
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Courchamp, Franck
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Angulo, Elena;Courchamp, Franck
背景：最近有一种假设认为，人类对稀有性的重视可能导致稀有物种的灭绝。这是因为人们愿意付出高昂的代价来剥削最后的个体。许多爱好，如生态旅游或饲养异国情调的宠物可能会导致这种效应-被称为人为的艾利效应。然而，整个理论依赖于迄今未得到证实的假设，人们的价值rarity.Methodology/主要发现：为了量化多少人重视稀有物种相对于常见的，我们创建了在线幻灯片的照片，无论是稀有或常见的物种在互联网网站上。带有稀有物种照片的幻灯片吸引了更多的游客，一般来说，游客花了更多的时间等待观看它。结论/意义：我们提供了人们比普通物种更重视稀有物种的证据。由于我们没有针对特定市场的消费者，这一发现表明，人为的Allee效应可能是由大部分人口驱动的。鉴于我们的在线实验的大量参与，我们强调了万维网资源作为保护行动工具的潜力。然而，这里提出的证据表明，公众价值稀有物种，结合假设，人为Allee效应正在运作，这意味着保护主义者应该谨慎使用稀有性，以促进保护。
Background: It has recently been postulated that the value humans place on rarity could cause the extinction of rare species. This is because people are willing to pay the high costs of exploiting the last individuals. Many hobbies, such as ecotourism or the keeping of exotic pets may cause this effect-known as the anthropogenic Allee effect. However, the entire theory relies on the insofar undemonstrated assumption that people do value rarity.Methodology/Principal Findings: In order to quantify how much people valued rare species relative to common ones, we created online slideshows of photographs of either rare or common species on an Internet web site. The slideshow with photographs of rare species attracted more visitors, and visitors spent, in general, more time waiting to view it.Conclusions/Significance: We provide evidence that people value rare more than common species. As we did not target consumers of a specific market, this finding suggests that the anthropogenic Allee effect is likely be driven by a large part of the population. Given the substantial participation in our online experiment, we highlight the potential of the world wide web resource as a tool for conservation action. However, the evidence presented here that the general public value rare species, combined with the assumption that anthropogenic Allee effect is operating, implies that conservationists should be prudent when using rarity to promote conservation.