Unveiling Emerging Trends and Gaps in Scientific Research on Vertebrate Biodiversity in Tropical Savannahs

ABSTRACT Savannahs are among the most threatened ecosystems in the world due to the rapid change in their land use for forestry, soybean cultivation, and pasture. However, savannahs are less studied than tropical forest ecosystems despite this intense anthropogenic pressure. As such, here we investigate the gaps and trends in scientific research on terrestrial vertebrates in tropical savannahs, via a systematic search for scientific articles on the Web of Science platform. Subsequently, to identify the geographic distribution of the studies, we divided the total number of articles by the area of the Savannah biome (in km2) that occurs in each country. Our results show that Africa has a deficit in scientific research on terrestrial vertebrates compared to Oceania and South America, and that this global trend in the distribution of studies is closely related to the Human Development Index. We also identified land use change and fire dynamics as the most studied drivers of biodiversity loss, while invasive species and climate change were the least well studied. Finally, our research revealed that about 80% of the articles focused on mammals and birds, and that phylogenetic and functional diversity were the least studied dimensions of vertebrate biodiversity in tropical savannahs. These results are concerning for conservation efforts, as they reveal not only a substantial geographic gap but also a limited and biased understanding of savannah biodiversity.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Ecology and Evolution

• Publication date

  2026-02-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1002/ece3.72917PMID 41704916PMCID 12907033
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Replacing the natural savanna matrix with eucalyptus plantations and soybean fields changes the seed rain promoted by bats in Amazonian savannas

  2026cited by this paper
• Crash Course in Conservation: Predicting and Mitigating Wildlife–Vehicle Collisions in a Savannah Area

  2025cited by this paper
• Replacing natural savannas with eucalyptus and soybeans changes the matrix use and reduces bat taxonomic and functional diversity in the Amazonian savannas

  2025cited by this paper
• An African perspective to biodiversity conservation in the twenty-first century

  2025cited by this paper
• Human Development Report 2023/24. Breaking the Gridlock: Reimagining Cooperation in a Polarized World

  2024cited by this paper
• Late Pleistocene emergence of an anthropogenic fire regime in Australia’s tropical savannahs

  2024cited by this paper
• Global trends and biases in biodiversity conservation research

  2024cited by this paper
• Global systematic map of research on bats in agricultural systems

  2023cited by this paper
• State of Finance for Nature 2023: The Big Nature Turnaround - Repurposing $7 Trillion to Combat Nature Loss

  2023cited by this paper
• Ongoing declines for the world’s amphibians in the face of emerging threats

  2023cited by this paper
• Effect of Antiparasitic Management of Cattle on the Diversity and Functional Structure of Dung Beetle (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) Assemblages in the Colombian Caribbean

  2023cited by this paper
• Publication trends in global biodiversity research on protected areas

  2023cited by this paper
• Global drivers of change across tropical savannah ecosystems and insights into their management and conservation

  2022cited by this paper
• The State of the World’s Forests 2022

  2022cited by this paper
• Rare species disproportionally contribute to functional diversity in managed forests

  2022cited by this paper
• To clear or not to clear: Unpacking soy farmers' decision-making on deforestation in Brazil's Cerrado

  2022cited by this paper
• The greatest threats to species

  2022cited by this paper
• The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews

  2021cited by this paper
• Using the IUCN Red List to map threats to terrestrial vertebrates at global scale

  2021influential reference
• Three Decades of Land Cover Change in East Africa

  2021cited by this paper
• Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today's Academic World

  2021cited by this paper
• A protocol for reproducible functional diversity analyses

  2021cited by this paper
• Conservation overstretch and long‐term decline of wildlife and tourism in the Central African savannas

  2021cited by this paper
• Biases in conservation: a regional analysis of Spanish vertebrates

  2021cited by this paper
• Indigenous impacts on north Australian savanna fire regimes over the Holocene

  2021cited by this paper
• Distance sampling surveys reveal 17 million vertebrates directly killed by the 2020’s wildfires in the Pantanal, Brazil

  2021cited by this paper
• Change in terrestrial human footprint drives continued loss of intact ecosystems

  2020influential reference
• Recent deforestation drove the spike in Amazonian fires

  2020cited by this paper
• Mapping Africa’s Biodiversity: More of the Same Is Just Not Good Enough

  2020cited by this paper
• Global gaps in trait data for terrestrial vertebrates

  2020cited by this paper
• Vegetation fires in the Anthropocene

  2020cited by this paper
• A strategy for the next decade to address data deficiency in neglected biodiversity

  2020cited by this paper
• The Impact of Wood Fuel Energy on Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: Dynamic Macro-Panel Approach

  2020cited by this paper
• Unprecedented burn area of Australian mega forest fires

  2020cited by this paper
• The Amazonian Savannas of French Guiana: Cultural and Social Importance, Biodiversity, and Conservation Challenges

  2020cited by this paper
• No Net Loss of Species Diversity After Prescribed Fires in the Brazilian Savanna

  2020cited by this paper
• Are Roadkill Hotspots in the Cerrado Equal Among Groups of Vertebrates?

  2020cited by this paper
• Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Sustainability Assessment and Its Impact on the Human Development Index (HDI) in Kailahun District of Sierra Leone

  2019cited by this paper
• Gaps in terrestrial soundscape research: It's time to focus on tropical wildlife.

  2019cited by this paper
• Agricultural Expansion in the Brazilian Cerrado: Increased Soil and Nutrient Losses and Decreased Agricultural Productivity

  2019cited by this paper
• Alien versus native species as drivers of recent extinctions

  2019influential reference
• Deforestation control in the Brazilian Amazon: A conservation struggle being lost as agreements and regulations are subverted and bypassed

  2019cited by this paper
• Spatial and Temporal Variations of Forest Cover in Developing Countries

  2019cited by this paper
• Property size drives differences in forest code compliance in the Brazilian Cerrado

  2018cited by this paper
• Tropical savannas and dry forests.

  2018influential reference
• Biodiversity, threats and conservation challenges in the Cerrado of Amapá, an Amazonian savanna.

  2017cited by this paper
• Once were foragers: The archaeology of agrarian Australia and the fate of Aboriginal land management

  2017cited by this paper
• Scientific research on animal biodiversity is systematically biased towards vertebrates and temperate regions

  2017cited by this paper
• Toward reassessing data‐deficient species

  2017cited by this paper
• An Ecoregion-Based Approach to Protecting Half the Terrestrial Realm

  2017cited by this paper
• Case studies of the political economy of science granting councils in sub-Saharan Africa

  2017cited by this paper
• Rare species contribute disproportionately to the functional structure of species assemblages

  2016cited by this paper
• The underestimated biodiversity of tropical grassy biomes

  2016influential reference
• Threatened or Data Deficient: assessing the conservation status of poorly known species

  2016cited by this paper
• Persistent Disparities between Recent Rates of Habitat Conversion and Protection and Implications for Future Global Conservation Targets

  2016cited by this paper
• Land‐use change affects water recycling in Brazil's last agricultural frontier

  2016cited by this paper
• Mapping Decadal Land Cover Changes in the Woodlands of North Eastern Namibia from 1975 to 2014 Using the Landsat Satellite Archived Data

  2016cited by this paper
• Overview of chytrid emergence and impacts on amphibians

  2016cited by this paper
• Ecological legacies of civil war: 35‐year increase in savanna tree cover following wholesale large‐mammal declines

  2016cited by this paper
• Predicting the conservation status of data‐deficient species

  2015cited by this paper
• Local and global pyrogeographic evidence that indigenous fire management creates pyrodiversity

  2015cited by this paper
• Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013

  2015cited by this paper
• Effects of an extensive fire on arboreal small mammal populations in a neotropical savanna woodland

  2015cited by this paper
• Land Degradation in South Africa – A Degradation Index Derived from 10 Years of Net Primary Production Data

  2015cited by this paper
• Seven Shortfalls that Beset Large-Scale Knowledge of Biodiversity

  2015cited by this paper
• Conservation in Brazil needs to include non‐forest ecosystems

  2015cited by this paper
• The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: a comparative analysis

  2015cited by this paper
• Impacts of civil conflict on primary forest habitat in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1990–2010

  2014cited by this paper
• Whose conservation?

  2014cited by this paper
• Savanna Vegetation-Fire-Climate Relationships Differ Among Continents

  2014influential reference
• Slowing Amazon deforestation through public policy and interventions in beef and soy supply chains

  2014cited by this paper
• Experimental evidence that feral cats cause local extirpation of small mammals in Australia's tropical savannas

  2014cited by this paper
• High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change

  2013influential reference
• The conservation status of the world's reptiles

  2013cited by this paper
• Darwinian shortfalls in biodiversity conservation.

  2013cited by this paper
• Defining pyromes and global syndromes of fire regimes

  2013cited by this paper
• Effect of land-cover change on Africa's burnt area

  2013cited by this paper
• Ecological thresholds at the savanna-forest boundary: how plant traits, resources and fire govern the distribution of tropical biomes.

  2012cited by this paper
• The Functions of Biological Diversity in an Age of Extinction

  2012cited by this paper
• Geographical and taxonomic biases in research on biodiversity in human-modified landscapes

  2012cited by this paper
• Recent ecological responses to climate change support predictions of high extinction risk

  2011cited by this paper
• Flammable biomes dominated by eucalypts originated at the Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary.

  2011cited by this paper
• The Global Extent and Determinants of Savanna and Forest as Alternative Biome States

  2011cited by this paper
• Deciphering the distribution of the savanna biome.

  2011cited by this paper
• Experimental investigation of fire ecology in the C3 and C4 subspecies of Alloteropsis semialata

  2010cited by this paper
• Fire severity in a northern Australian savanna landscape: the importance of time since previous fire

  2010cited by this paper
• Beyond the forest edge: Ecology, diversity and conservation of the grassy biomes

  2010cited by this paper
• A multi-region assessment of tropical forest biodiversity in a human-modified world

  2010cited by this paper
• The importance of fine-scale savanna heterogeneity for reptiles and small mammals

  2010cited by this paper
• Picante: R tools for integrating phylogenies and ecology

  2010cited by this paper
• International Union for Conservation of Nature

  2010cited by this paper
• Contrasting changes in taxonomic vs. functional diversity of tropical fish communities after habitat degradation.

  2010cited by this paper
• Anthropogenic impacts on tropical forest biodiversity: a network structure and ecosystem functioning perspective

  2010cited by this paper
• Ecosystem services from tropical savannas: economic opportunities through payments for environmental services

  2009cited by this paper
• Plant extinctions and introductions lead to phylogenetic and taxonomic homogenization of the European flora

  2009cited by this paper
• Impacts of large herbivorous mammals on bird diversity and abundance in an African savanna

  2008cited by this paper
• Climate Change Impacts on African Rangelands

  2008cited by this paper
• New multidimensional functional diversity indices for a multifaceted framework in functional ecology.

  2008cited by this paper
• The “fire stick farming” hypothesis: Australian Aboriginal foraging strategies, biodiversity, and anthropogenic fire mosaics

  2008cited by this paper
• Contributions of woody and herbaceous vegetation to tropical savanna ecosystem productivity: a quasi-global estimate.

  2008cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.