Abstract:

One of the most worrying indicators of the current global crisis is biodiversity loss. The adults of the future, that is, the children of the present, will have to make decisions on this emergency. Their biodiversity-related attitudes and knowledge will be key to face this problem. Therefore, the diagnosis of their biodiversity literacy is necessary to design adequate educational strategies. Unfortunately, many works suggest that children from westernized countries have a limited knowledge about biodiversity, especially regarding the native one. In this work, we have assessed the ability to name local temperate forest and exotic African savannah animals by northern Spanish children (aged 6 to 10; n=949). For this purpose, we have shown them a photograph of each biome and asked to write down as many animals as they know live there. Overall, children mentioned less animals in the list related to the local biome (temperate forest), than in the one corresponding to the exotic biome (5 and 5.8 animals, respectively). Besides, although most of the mentioned animals for the two biomes were wild, they also listed domesticated ones. In any case, not all the named wild animals belonged to the corresponding biome in the picture. Actually, correctly listed animals for both biomes was lower and children listed 30% more correct animals for savannah than for the local temperate forest (mean of 4.61 and 3.61 animals respectively). The mention of mammals was predominant in both biomes’ lists, but especially in savannah (where more than 80% of the animals named was mammal). Moreover, the mentioned animals from savannah showed a higher taxonomic resolution level, that is, there were more mentions at species level (e.g., lion). On the contrary, animals mentioned for the local temperate forest showed a lower taxonomic resolution level, and listings displayed many animals at the class or order level (e.g., bird or butterfly). When asking children where they got the information about fauna from both biomes, they pointed out family as the main source of the information about local fauna, whereas television was the primary one for savannah fauna. These results show that students have limited information on local biodiversity and that information transmitted by the family is not enough to learn about autochthonous biodiversity. All this suggests the need to strengthen literacy about local biodiversity, and both formal and informal education can be key in this process.

Keywords:

Biodiversity education, animals, biome, temperate forest, savannah, taxonomy.