Journal
BIOLOGY LETTERS
Volume 15, Issue 11, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2019.0703
Keywords
nature's contribution to people; aesthetics; coral reef fish; ecosystem services; biodiversity; human interest
Categories
Funding
- Fondation de France
- University of Montpellier
- Andromede oceanologie
- Centre Universitaire de Mayotte
- CNRS
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Cultural and recreational values of biodiversity are considered as important dimensions of nature's contribution to people. Among these values, the aesthetics can be of major importance as the appreciation of beauty is one of the simplest forms of human emotional response. Using an online survey, we disentangled the effects of different facets of biodiversity on aesthetic preferences of coral reef fish assemblages that are among the most emblematic assemblages on Earth. While we found a positive saturating effect of species' richness on human preference, we found a net negative effect of species abundance, no effect of species functional diversity and contrasting effects of species composition depending on species' attractiveness. Our results suggest that the biodiversity-human interest relationship is more complex than has been previously stated. By integrating several scales of organization, our study is a step forward in better evaluating the aesthetic value of biodiversity.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available