Tracking the cultural niches of North American birds through time

1. Conservation efforts are constrained by our poor grasp of changing relationships between humans and other species. We used Internet query data describing relative public interest in different species of birds, and combined them with citizen science data describing relative encounter rates with those same taxa, to gain perspective on shifting relationships between people and birds in the United States.

2. National-level interest in birds increased an average of 12.6% across sequential 5-year periods while controlling for the volume of Internet searches and changing encounter rates with species in the United States. Geographic alignment of state-level interest in birds and state-level encounters with birds increased by an average of 5.7% across species.

3. In multivariate multiple regression analysis, we found that species did not move uniformly through a 2D “cultural niche space” between time periods. Shifts varied according to changes in federal protection afforded to species, ...