ArticlePLoS biology2022
The aesthetic value of reef fishes is globally mismatched to their conservation priorities.
Article in PLoS biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Drivers of Taxonomic Bias in Ecology and Evolution: Insights From Ethologists and Behavioural Ecologists.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- From Beauty to Protection: How Phenotypic Traits Influence Conservation Perceptions of Freshwater Fish.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Marine protected areas marginally offset anthropogenic declines in tropical reef fish contributions to nature and people.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Something looks fishy! A philosophical exploration of AI for marine conservation.AI and ethics · 2026Article
- Spatio-temporal variability in forest biodiversity associated with human well-being across socio-economic deprivation gradients.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Benthic communities on restored coral reefs confer equivalent aesthetic value to healthy reefs.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Conserving the beauty of the world's reef fish assemblages.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Six-decade research bias towards fancy and familiar bird species.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Low human interest for the most at-risk reef fishes worldwide.Science advances · 2024Article
- Nature experiences affect the aesthetic reception of art: The case of paintings depicting aquatic animals.PloS one · 2024Article
- Article
- What drives our aesthetic attraction to birds?npj biodiversity · 2023Article
- WASP: the World Archives of Species Perception.Database : the journal of biological databases and curation · 2023Article
- Assessing the aesthetic attractivity of European butterflies: A web-based survey protocol.PloS one · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Reef fishes are closely connected to many human populations, yet their contributions to society are mostly considered through their economic and ecological values. Cultural and intrinsic values of reef fishes to the public can be critical drivers of conservation investment and success, but remain challenging to quantify. Aesthetic value represents one of the most immediate and direct means by which human societies engage with biodiversity, and can be evaluated from species to ecosystems. Here, we provide the aesthetic value of 2,417 ray-finned reef fish species by combining intensive evaluation of photographs of fishes by humans with predicted values from machine learning. We identified important biases in species' aesthetic value relating to evolutionary history, ecological traits, and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) threat status. The most beautiful fishes are tightly packed into small parts of both the phylogenetic tree and the ecological trait space. In contrast, the less attractive fishes are the most ecologically and evolutionary distinct species and those recognized as threatened. Our study highlights likely important mismatches between potential public support for conservation and the species most in need of this support. It also provides a pathway for scaling-up our understanding of what are both an important nonmaterial facet of biodiversity and a key component of nature's contribution to people, which could help better anticipate consequences of species loss and assist in developing appropriate communication strategies.
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