Animal geographies: an international state of the field survey

The past 30 years have seen the steady development of the geographic subfield of animal geographies through an ongoing expansion of research methods, theoretical concepts, and topical and species focus. In 2021, we undertook the first international survey of the subfield with two goals: to survey practitioners about their work and to determine interest in establishing an international community. In this article we share the results of what 141 respondents from 24 countries self-reported in the areas of participant demographics, definitions of animal geographies, interest in an international community, and research as related to field sites, species, methods, and future themes. Our results indicate that a gap in intra and inter-cultural understandings of what constitutes animal geographies and a lack of an organized global structure are indeed potential limits to the subfield’s capacities to continue to grow; however, we found that a focus on capacity-building and cross-cultural facilitation could provide a pathway to more international diffusion of animal geographies-based research.

过去三十年来，动物地理学（animal geographies）这一地理学分支领域，依托研究方法、理论概念以及研究主题与目标物种范围的持续拓展，实现了稳健发展。2021年，我们针对该分支领域开展了首次国际调研，旨在达成两项目标：一是调研从业者的研究工作情况，二是了解学界对组建国际学术共同体的意愿。
本文中，我们将分享来自24个国家的141名受访者的自报调研结果，内容涵盖参与者人口统计学特征、动物地理学的定义、对组建国际学术共同体的兴趣，以及与实地研究场景、研究物种、研究方法和未来研究主题相关的研究方向。调研结果显示，学界对动物地理学内涵的文化内部与跨文化理解存在偏差，且缺乏系统化的全球架构，这确实可能成为制约该分支领域持续发展的潜在瓶颈；不过我们也发现，聚焦能力建设与跨文化协作，可为基于动物地理学的研究实现更广泛的国际传播提供可行路径。