The biodiversity bias: Global research still favours the wealthy

by Monash University
July 24, 2025

Dr Shawan Chowdhury is an ecologist specialising in insects and biodiversity on our changing planet. Among his published papers is a 2021 review of butterfly migration worldwide, a study he led in order to better-understand movement and therefore conservation.

This is “global change biology”, which focuses on the meeting point between biology and environmental change.

But he also has other research interests such as citizen science, language barriers, biodiversity conservation and, in a new “commentary” study in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, equity in science. As in – whose science is being heard?

Dr Chowdhury, a lecturer in Monash University’s School of Biological Sciences, co-authored the study in which 3731 published research papers by authors from 150 countries were analysed.

Poorer countries are under-represented and research collaborations are skewed to their richer counterparts, the team found.

Keep reading: https://lens.monash.edu/@science/2025/07/24/1387650/the-biodiversity-bias-global-research-still-favours-the-wealthy

Read the Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fee.2851