The value that humanity attaches to beauty creates unjustifiable biases in many areas of life. For example, in wildlife ecology, superficially stranger and less appealing fauna receive much less attention than those considered classically ‘cute’ or powerful. Think slugs versus pandas, spiders versus orcas. This is of course problematic from a conservation perspective. Despite their looks, non-charismatic fauna can be crucial components of natural ecosystems — often greater than more photogenic species — and yet they can be left behind in conservation efforts. The plant sciences are not immune to such biases either, affecting which species and ecosystems we study and how we conduct our research.

A particular example of the latter is ‘majestic forest bias’: the preference of ecologists to set-up plots in gap-free, densely forested areas inhabited by a diverse mix of the oldest trees1 — in other words the most aesthetically beautiful. This bias can have a far-reaching impact, leading to overestimation of forest biomass, carbon sequestration capacity and biodiversity. Even at an individual species level, the attractiveness of a plant influences our likelihood of studying it. In alpine flora, for example, the most important determinant of whether species are selected for study appears to be whether its flowers were blue, rather than its ecological traits or rarity2.

Such biases towards majesty persist to a whole ecosystem level. The most famous and iconic biome of all is arguably the Amazonian rainforest. Although vast swathes remain unexplored, the Amazon is believed to house almost a quarter of floral biodiversity, with many new plant species being discovered each year3. It is the world’s largest terrestrial carbon sink with immeasurable ecological, hydrological and ethnobotanical value. As such it is unsurprising that the Amazon disproportionately defines images of biodiversity at the expense of other important ecosystems.

Speaking at the twentieth International Botanical Conference (IBC2024) held last month in Madrid, Tania Hernández Hernández of the Desert Botanical Garden (DBG) in Arizona petitioned audiences to expand their view of areas of high biodiversity beyond tropical rainforests to include deserts. Contrary to popular belief, drylands support high levels of floral diversity and disproportionately contribute to the global productivity increases observed in recent decades4. Dryland flora exhibit a stunning array of adaptations to harsh environmental conditions, such as crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) photosynthesis and other leaf functional traits that limit water loss. As global temperatures continue to rise it will become increasingly important to understand the mechanisms that underlie such resistance towards high temperatures and low precipitation.

While many people will have heard of the Amazon, few have heard of the Cerrado — the most biodiverse savannah in the world covering around 20% of Brazil. It contains more than 10,000 plant species, 44% of which are endemic. This astounding diversity, particularly exhibited by herbaceous plants, is in part attributable to their evolution of adaptations to fire, a force that continues to shape this ecosystem5.

Like the Amazon, the Cerrado is under severe threat from unsustainable land-use change and deforestation. The devastating impact that this has had on Amazonian biodiversity is widely acknowledged, as demonstrated by recent commitments from the Brazilian government to enforce moratoriums on soybean cultivation in the region. In terms of total area cleared however, the Cerrado surpasses Amazonia. Around 40–55% of the biome has already been converted to croplands, pastures and planted forests. It is projected that of the area that remains intact, 31–34% will be cleared by 2050, putting 480 endemic plant species at risk of extinction6,7. Numerous calls from scientists to reverse the political neglect shown towards the Cerrado remain, so far, unheeded.

Even without direct assault, some of the most resilient ecosystems face collapse. Last year, researchers from the DBG reported an unprecedented die-back of Saguaro cacti in the Sonoran Desert — an iconic species adapted to withstand extreme heat and aridity. Soaring nighttime temperatures prevented stomatal opening, leaving this CAM species unable to efficiently photosynthesize. The peril of the Saguaros points to the broader fragility of dryland vegetation, which is highly vulnerable to climate change and in need of concerted conservation efforts.

It seems intuitively obvious that an aesthetically attractive mixture of megaflora is the manifestation of a richer overall biodiversity than the tedium of a monoculture. However, even within hyperdiverse tropical rainforests, there are heterogeneities that challenge this simplistic notion of biodiversity. In the tropical forests of the Congo Basin, there are extensive regions where the canopy is dominated by a single species — Gilbertiodendron dewevreir. It is tempting to assume that these monodominant forests are species-poor, but research presented by Ellen Heimpel, a PhD student working in David Harris’s group at the Royal Botanic Garden at Edinburgh, at IBC2024 showed the opposite. G. dewevreir forests were in fact an important habitat for over twenty families of vascular plants, facilitating more unique associations than those in adjacent mixed species forests8. Such a finding leads us to question our stringent definition of what a biodiverse ecosystem looks like.

Bias towards beauty is nothing new. But in our singular focus towards the majestic, we ignore the extraordinary lessons about plant life and functioning than can be learned from less charismatic ecosystems. Even worse, we could be blinded by beauty at a time when these ecosystems need our attention more than ever.