According to two new UNSW studies , researchers often choose research topics based personal preferences and cultural attitudes, including exposure to films, TV shows and even zoos, rather than attempting to fill the most pressing gaps in knowledge.
The result is a scientific blind spot that extends across most living things, with birds and mammals species dominating research despite making up a tiny fraction of overall biodiversity.
"Finding Nemo may have inspired many people to become marine biologists," says lead author Dr Pietro Pollo, from UNSW Science.
"In nature documentaries the focus is usually on polar bears, lions, elephants and other mammals, and that is where most research interest and funding ends up."
Less popular animals like insects, spiders, slugs and worms receive far less attention, leaving big gaps in our understanding of nature.
The researchers say this blind spot manifests in unpredictable ways because it's impossible to predict the long-term outcomes of basic research.
"We don't know what we don't know," says Pietro.
Research into lizard saliva helped lead to drugs such as Ozempic, while fluorescent proteins discovered in jellyfish transformed the study of individual cells, highlighting the important of studying a broad range of things.
"The next major discovery could be in an organism we currently ignore because we don't find it cute or exciting."
The researchers analysed more than one million ecology and evolution papers found that vertebrates appeared in more than half of papers involving animals, despite making up just 4.7% of described animal species.
Further, studies of vertebrates attract more citations and media attention than studies of invertebrates published in the same journals.
The researchers say science should broaden training, outreach and research opportunities to include a more representative sample of life on Earth.
"We have millions of species and limited time and funding, so we need to diversify our research as much as we can."
