Ungeneralizable generalizations? A meta-meta-analysis of the influence of taxonomic bias on the study of behavior.

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 4 of this Preprint. You must log in to post a comment. There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 4 of this Preprint. Add a Comment You must log in to post a comment. Comments There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. Meta-analysis is a powerful tool for synthesizing behavioral research and identifying general patterns. However, are the conclusions we draw from these analyses truly representative across animal groups? Alternatively, are our conclusions shaped by taxonomic biases in the underlying research? For example, in animal behavior, vertebrates are overrepresented in the research we conduct. This taxonomic imbalance raises concerns about the validity of generalizations drawn in the field. To examine this issue, we examined the meta-analyses published in Animal Behaviour, Behavioral Ecology, and Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology from 2000 – 2024. We then conducted a “meta-meta-analysis” to calculate the degree to which overall effects in prior meta-analytical results may have been mis-estimated due to taxonomic bias. We found that taxonomic biases in the primary research strongly influence effect size estimates in meta-analyses and can lead to improper inferences and generalizations. On average, meta-analytical averages are significantly misestimated and taxonomic bias also results in apparent changes in statistical significance. Because meta-analyses aggregate data, they propagate the biases present in an area of research, leading to potentially incorrect generalizations. Addressing this taxonomic bias is critical to generalizations that describe the true richness of animal behavior. https://doi.org/10.32942/X2XM06 Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Behavior, taxonomic bias, meta-analysis Published: 2025-07-03 01:03 Last Updated: 2025-11-14 12:14 CC-By Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Conflict of interest statement: None Data and Code Availability Statement: Data will be made available via the OSF platform upon submission of manuscript to an appropriate journal Language: English