A season for all things: Phenological imprints in Wikipedia usage and their relevance to conservation

Phenologyplays an important role in many human–nature interactions, but these seasonalpatterns are often overlooked in conservation. Here, we provide the first broad exploration of seasonalpatterns of interest in nature across many species and cultures. Using data from Wikipedia, a large online encyclopedia, we analyzed 2.33 billion pageviews to articles for 31,751 species across 245 languages. We show that seasonalityplays an important role in how and when people interact with plants and animals online. In total, over 25% of species in our data set exhibited a seasonalpattern in at least one of their language-edition pages, and seasonalityis significantly more prevalent in pages for plants and animals than it is in a random selection of Wikipedia articles. Pageview seasonalityvaries across taxonomic clades in ways that reflect observable patternsin phenology, with groups such as insects and flowering plantshaving higher seasonalitythan mammals. Differences between Wikipedia language editions are significant; pages in languages spoken at higher latitudes exhibit greater seasonalityoverall, and species seldom show the same pattern across multiple language editions. These results have relevance to conservation policy formulation and to improving our understanding of what drives human interest in biodiversity.