Historical biodiversity insights from Sir David Attenborough’s Zoo Quest expeditions

Historical-ecological approaches are increasingly being used to supplement biodiversity research. These approaches include gathering data from previously underutilized sources such as travellers’ accounts of species observations. Around 70 years ago, Sir David Attenborough began the Zoo Quest expeditions, in which he travelled to various tropical and subtropical locations to seek animals, plants and human cultures that in many cases had rarely, if ever, been captured on film before. I reviewed the books associated with these expeditions for observations of animal species, and gathered data from the IUCN Red List on the species’ geographical ranges and their status. I found that Attenborough documented 375 taxa, which included 21 classes, 82 orders, 152 families, 170 genera and 158 distinct species (eight species were recorded more than once across multiple expeditions, so in total 167 taxa were actually identified to species). Almost all species appeared to have been observed within their current geographical ranges, but there were discrepancies with the observed locations of five species. These results further demonstrate the potential value of travellers’ accounts for informing biodiversity baselines and trends, although as with any historical sources there are potential limitations to the data quality. This study nonetheless shows that Attenborough’s works provide novel sources of historical biodiversity data.