Cognitive biases can play a role in extinction assessments: The case of the Caspian tiger
Özgün Emre Can
Neil D’Cruze- 1Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey
- 2World Animal Protection, London, United Kingdom
- 3Department of Natural Sciences, Ecology and Environment Research Centre, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom
The premature declaration of a species as extinct has been reported across different taxonomic groups and is commonly referred to as Romeo’s error or the Lazarus effect. In this study, based on a review of historical records and testimonies from local communities, we review the case of Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata), a species we consider was prematurely declared globally extinct in 1950s. Considering that compelling evidence which suggests that Caspian tigers existed in Turkey perhaps up until early 1990s (some 40 years after international scientific community considered the species extinct) it is reasonable to posit that conservationists missed a historical opportunity to save the species. The case of the Caspian tiger demonstrates the cognitive bias of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action and the potential implications for conservation experts who are engaged in remotely evaluating contemporary species distributions. To mitigate these factors when assessing the global status of species threatened by extinction, we suggest that increased awareness of this type of cognitive bias could facilitate the introduction of additional measures in relevant conservation initiatives and in IUCN Red List assessments. For example, the formation of independent and specific teams to unearth implicit assumptions and weaknesses in assessments, and to question the group thinking of the species assessors. Against the backdrop of the current unprecedented rapid biodiversity decline, we recommend that researchers should be alert of the cognitive biases involved in species assessments and in conservation at large.
Introduction
The discipline of ecology and conservation is encumbered by a surprisingly large quantity of missing or incomplete information about the number of species, their distributions and status (Pimm et al., 2014). Even for popular and relatively large animals such as mammals, birds, and amphibians, taxonomic catalogues are still incomplete (Lees and Pimm, 2015). Since ecologists do not know what exists, they are obviously poorly placed to know what is being lost. This knowledge gap impedes conservation and increases extinction risk (Turvey et al., 2015). According to the IUCN, of the 71,576 species assessed, only 860 have become extinct in the wild (Pimm et al., 2014). However, recent mathematical models confirm that this is a serious underestimate (Tedesco et al., 2014). The problem is not only that diagnosing extinction is difficult (Roberts, 2006) but also that an unknown number of species are becoming extinct before they have been described by science (Keith and Burgman, 2004).
Conservation has another problem. Declaring a species extinct prematurely is sufficiently common to have a name, indeed there are two: Romeo’s error (Collar, 1998) and the Lazarus effect (Keith and Burgman, 2004). Rediscovery of species that are incorrectly considered to be extinct aren’t limited to the minute or the obscure, for example non-vascular plants, invertebrates, fungi and microorganisms whose lack of “charisma” has denied them research focus. In fact, this effect even obscures the regional existence of charismatic carnivores such as striped hyaenas (Hyaena hyaena) and leopards (Panthera pardus; Can, 2001, 2002, 2004; Can and Lise, 2004; Table 1). In this study we review the case of Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata), a species prematurely declared extinct in 1950s and make recommendations for minimizing such wrongful assessments in the future.
Table 1. A selection of species from the literature which were prematurely considered extinct resulting in missed conservation opportunities.
When did the Caspian tiger become extinct?
Tigers (Panthera tigris) have been present in Turkey since time immemorial. The English naturalist Edward Blyth, about whom Charles Darwin mentions in the Origins of Species with respect, mentions his sighting of a tiger in Ağrı Mountain (the highest mountain in Turkey with an altitude of 5,137 meters a.s.l) in 1855. He described locals trapping live young tigers for trade and added that the mountain was “infested” with tigers even around the snow line (Burton, 1933; Schnitzler and Hermann, 2019). Some decades later, a tiger was also reportedly hunted by Enver Pașa (1882–1922) in Eastern Turkey (SonDakika, 2011). Yet, at the time the international scientific community considered the Caspian tiger globally extinct, following a field survey in the 1950s that failed to document them in neighboring Iran (Can, 2004; Can and Lise, 2004). This was in despite of the fact that in Turkey this species still possessed “pest species” status according to national legislation (Official Gazette, 1937). The international scientific community continued to disregard the possibility of tiger presence and only acknowledged the existence of tigers in Turkey only later in 1974 when Baytop (1974), a local botanist, published an account of a tiger killed in Uludere district in an international scientific journal (Can, 2004; Can and Lise, 2004). Subsequently, this date has been widely mentioned in the literature as the time of extinction of the species in Turkey (e.g., Driscoll et al., 2009; Chestin et al., 2017).
However, if this young male had not been killed by Şehit Şen (Baytop, 1974) in 1970, it would likely have lived until the late 1970s. Moreover, Baytop (1974) reported that local hunters in Eastern Turkey were aware of the presence of tigers in Hakkari and Siirt provinces while in Uludere district and Şırnak provinces, hunters were killing up to eight tigers a year. Baytop (1974) adds later, that actors involved in the fur trade in İstanbul confirmed that they were still receiving tiger pelts from Eastern Turkey, and that some pelts were sent to Iraq directly from the region (Figure 1A). Some 10 years later, Turan (1984) reported that tigers had survived in remote corners of eastern Turkey until the mid-1980s as evidenced by reports of a steady trickle of one or two being killed annually.
Figure 1. (A) Caspian tiger records for the period between 1855 and 2001 in Turkey (a tiger reported to be hunted by Enver Pașa (1882–1922) in Eastern Turkey is not shown as exact location of the hunt is unknown). (B) A view from Caspian tiger habitat, Uludere district, Turkey where a male tiger was killed in 1970 and another was one reported at 3000 meters in 2001. The region is still a stronghold of tiger prey species. The black triangle figure on map represents Ağrı Mountain (5,137 meters). The abbreviations used in the map are as follows; GR, Greece; BG, Bulgaria; GE, Georgia; AZ, Azerbaijan; AM, Armenia; IR, Iran; IQ, Iraq; SY, Syria. The world map from Wikimedia Commons is under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain. Map of Turkey was created with MapChart.
A more recent survey by Can and Lise (2004) revealed that locals were organizing tiger hunts in Şırnak up until 1970s, and that there were at least two credible tiger sightings and three tigers killed in Eastern Turkey between 1959 and 1984. However, this still wasn’t the complete picture (see Figure 1A for all tiger records from Turkey), as the tiger might also have still had a presence in southwestern Turkey at that time. A local in Antalya, interviewed by one of us (ÖEC) in his 60s, described a childhood memory of how his father once hunted a “big cat with stripes” but failed to dry the enormous sized skin. Here, it must be noted that Baytop (1974), Turan (1984), and the local interviewed in Antalya in 2001 were likely reporting about tigers, and were not necessarily confused about leopards which were sometimes called “kaplan” in Turkish, also meaning tiger in English. So the Czech biologist Mazák (1981) may have been correct when stating, “possibly few tigers remain in south-eastern Turkey” in 1981.
Years later, during a field survey in Uludere district, the same area where a tiger was killed in 1970, a credible sighting of a “large cat with stripes” at 3000 metres above sea level was reported by military personnel to Can and Lise (2004) (Figure 1B). The locals also reported another “big cat with stripes” sighting to the military personnel in Güçlükonak district (about 80 km west of Uludere) in the same year (Can and Lise, 2004). After a brief meeting with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Division of International Conservation Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Fund officers in Washington, D.C. in 2004, one of us (ÖEC) prepared for an international workshop and a field survey of the area with the support of USFWS Division of International Conservation Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Fund. However, this workshop and survey could not be implemented due to security reasons (Can, 2004; Can and Lise, 2004).
Considering that Caspian tigers probably existed in Turkey perhaps up until early 1990s, some 40 years after international scientific community considered the species extinct, it is reasonable to posit that the complete absence of surveys throughout that period, as one symptom of national and international inertia, squandered a historical opportunity to save the species. Today, the continued presence of the Caspian tiger in some remote corner of eastern Turkey is less likely. However, it is important to note that a recent study elucidates the evolutionary and natural history of tigers (Sun et al., 2022). Specifically, the study indicates that the Caspian tiger may have originated from an ancestral Northeast Asian tiger population and then experienced gene flow from southern Bengal tigers (Sun et al., 2022). The study also suggests that Amur and Caspian tigers had a once-common ancestor in East or Northeast Asia (Sun et al., 2022). Moreover, similar to the tiger reintroduction programme in Kazakhstan (see WWF Russia, 2019 for details), reintroduction from the Amur tiger (P. t. altaica) stock to Turkey might be an option since “interruption of potential historical gene flow across the ancestral Eurasian distribution of P. t. altaica + P. t. virgata may have been too recent (<200 years) to accumulate sub-species level genetic differentiation” (Driscoll et al., 2009; see Chestin et al., 2017 for an assessment of tiger reintroduction in Central Asia).
Cognitive biases in species assessments
Researchers and practitioners working in monitoring and assessing conservation status of species are used to thinking about the quality and reliability of the data but less about their own cognitive biases. In fact, research has shown that cognitive biases affect pheasants, rats, capuchin monkeys and other animal species (e.g., Harding et al., 2004; Lakshminaryanan et al., 2008; Beardsworth et al., 2021). Similarly, humans including academics, conservationists, and wildlife managers are hardwired for cognitive biases. Cognitive biases play a role when people assessing a species’ status notice evidence in the first place; how they interpret it, and how they make conclusions during the process of species assessments.
The case of the Caspian tiger demonstrates the cognitive bias of the Dunning–Kruger effect (Kruger and Dunning, 1999) in action and the potential implications for conservation. The Dunning–Kruger effect, a phenomenon known in psychology, prevails when people overestimate their competence and underestimate their incompetence in social and intellectual domains. As a result, people not only reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, their incompetence prevents them from critically evaluating their own thinking (Kruger and Dunning, 1999). Characteristics of this effect appear to have bedevilled the foregoing account of prematurely announcing the extinction of Caspian tiger. If such a mishap was avoided in the case of the Caspian tiger between 1950s and 1980s, and much needed research effort was spent, the Caspian tiger might probably still roam in Turkey today. The case of Caspian tiger demonstrates how experts that are remotely evaluating contemporary species distributions can fall prey to the Dunning–Kruger effect. So how can this bias be prevented in the future?
Minimizing expert bias in extinction assessments
Conservationists, like physicians, judges and experts in geopolitics, are typically “highly educated groups making high-stakes decisions” (Hallsworth et al., 2018) that are also hardwired for biases. Acknowledging this fact, would possibly make the conservation community aware and facilitate the introduction of additional measures in relevant conservation initiatives. Moreover, a species assessment mostly requires the work of an established expert group, but group work has inherent risks (Hallsworth et al., 2018). Research has shown that in group discussions, individuals are very sensitive to what others think; rather than challenging, they reinforce each other and conform to the group majority view by self-censoring due to group enforcement (Hallsworth et al., 2018). Also, groups tend to focus on what most group members already know; initial contributions can strongly sway group opinion and discussions within the group can make the group’s view extreme (Hallsworth et al., 2018). Therefore, to mitigate these factors, when assessing the global status of species such as the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, independent “Red Teams,” as used in military, intelligence agencies and private sector, could be formed to unearth implicit assumptions and weaknesses in assessments and to question the group thinking of the species assessors.
Nevertheless, even the best possible assessments reflecting the opinions of academics sitting in some other corner of the world cannot replace the necessity of field surveys by local biologists; conservation needs more boots on the ground (Wilson, 2017). Mathematical models can now inform extrapolations from sightings, or even rumors, of rare species e.g., (see Rivadeneira et al., 2009; Lee, 2014; Boakes et al., 2015; Turvey et al., 2015 for information) and this can indicate what steps need to be taken on the ground when designing field surveys (to search for signs, tracks and environmental DNA) by trained personnel, particularly in remote regions. However, it must be noted that when searching for rare species, not all researchers are equal. An often unremarked determinant of the success of field surveys, and one that is elusive to describe, is the aptitude and skill of field staff (Scott et al., 2008). When reviewing records about the presence of elusive and rare species, or reading reports about the presence or absence of such species, the reader should think critically about the competence and the field skills of the reporter, and attempt not to be biased by authority or status. Moreover, as the recent discovery of a clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) population at 3500 meters a.s.l. (a world record altitude for the species) in Langtang Himalayas (Can et al., 2020) demonstrated, local information is not always reliable, locals may not be aware of rare and elusive species. Therefore, local information or expert opinion cannot fulfil the role of carefully designed field research (Can and Togan, 2009). In brief, we recommend that decision about extinctions, as for all conservation focused initiatives, should be based on the consensus of trained local conservation biologists, local authorities and locals rather than solely on the opinions of a subjectively selected elite group of experts operating remotely.
The pace of biodiversity decline is unprecedented and has been dubbed the sixth mass extinction (e.g., Leakey and Lewin, 1995; Ceballos and Ehrlich, 2018), with habitat loss, and exploitation of wildlife, highlighted as being among the greatest threats to global diversity (IPBES, 2019). Against this backdrop of rapidly declining biodiversity, we hope this article inspires further research in cognitive biases involved in species assessments and in conservation at large.
Author contributions
ÖC: conceived, wrote the original manuscript, and created the figures. ÖC and ND’C: contributed, reviewed, and edited the manuscript for publication. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
Funding
The open access publication fee was kindly covered by Manchester Metropolitan University.
Acknowledgments
We thank Angie Elwin and Özge Balkız for providing feedback on the manuscript. ÖC thanks George Schaller for visiting him in the field in Turkey in 2003 and for sharing insights and historical knowledge on Caspian tigers. ND’C thanks World Animal Protection and Manchester Metropolitan University for supporting his research.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
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Keywords: Caspian tiger, extinction, Romeo’s error, Lazarus species, species assessments, IUCN Red List, IUCN
Citation: Can &E and D’Cruze N (2023) Cognitive biases can play a role in extinction assessments: The case of the Caspian tiger. Front. Ecol. Evol. 10:1050191. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2022.1050191
Edited by:
Artem Nedoluzhko, European University at Saint Petersburg, RussiaReviewed by:
Reuven Yosef, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, IsraelCopyright © 2023 Can and D’Cruze. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Özgün Emre Can, ✉ oecan@ankara.edu.tr