Attention directed at different species by society and science is particularly relevant within the field of conservation, as societal preferences will strongly impact support for conservation initiatives and their success. Here, we assess the association between societal and research interests in four charismatic and threatened species groups, derived from a range of different online sources and social media platforms as well as scientific publications. We found a high level of concordance between scientific and societal taxonomic attention, which was consistent among assessed species groups and media sources. Results indicate that research is apparently not as disconnected from the interests of society as it is often reproached, and that societal support for current research objectives should be adequate. While the high degree of similarity between scientific and societal interest is both striking and satisfying, the dissimilarities are also interesting, as new scientific findings may constitute a constant source of novel interest for the society. In that respect, additional efforts will be necessary to draw scientific and societal focus towards less charismatic species that are in urgent need of research and conservation attention.

在保护领域内，社会和科学对不同物种的关注尤其重要，因为社会偏好将极大地影响对保护举措及其成功的支持。在这里，我们评估了来自四个不同的在线资源和社交媒体平台以及科学出版物的四个具有超凡魅力和受威胁物种的社会和研究兴趣之间的关联。我们发现科学和社会分类学关注之间的高度一致，这在评估的物种组和媒体来源之间是一致的。结果表明，研究与社会利益之间的联系似乎并没有经常受到指责，并且对当前研究目标的社会支持应该足够。尽管科学和社会利益之间的高度相似性令人惊讶和令人满意，但相异之处也很有趣，因为新的科学发现可能构成社会不断产生的新兴趣的源泉。在这方面，将需要作出更多的努力，将科学和社会焦点吸引到迫切需要研究和保护的魅力较小的物种上。