Scientists prefer studying pretty plants to dull ones

WHO WAS responsible for inventing the term “charismatic megafauna” is lost in the mists of time. The words do, though, describe a real phenomenon, which is that big, showy animals tend to get a disproportionate amount of attention from biologists. Whether this reflects the prejudices of the researchers themselves or is a consequence of a wider public interest in preserving showy species, and of the concomitant funding which accompanies that interest, is not clear. Probably a bit of both. But what is true for the animal kingdom is, it now turns out, true for the plant one as well, as Martino Adamo of the University of Turin, in Italy, describes this week in Nature Plants.

While conducting research in the mountains near Turin on Tephroseris balbisiana, a scruffy yellow-flowered ragwort (pictured), Dr Adamo noticed it was easier to track down information about other, more beautiful, species found in the region than it was to discover things about the object of his own research. That led him to wonder if the well-attested preferences of zoologists for the showy also extends to botanists. To find out, he recruited a team of fellow researchers to help him analyse the literature on the matter.