Invertebrates Ignored: Teachers’ Species Identification Skills and Awareness for Different Categories of Plants and Animals

Education is crucial for addressing the global biodiversity crisis and encouraging behaviours that support sustainable resource use and biodiversity protection. Species identification skills are an important part of biodiversity education, but research shows that educational practitioners have limited species knowledge and preferences for certain biodiversity. This study compares UK practitioners’ knowledge, awareness, and perceptions regarding four biodiversity categories (invertebrates, mammals, birds, flowering plants). UK schoolteachers in primary education, secondary science, and geography (n = 192) completed an online survey, comprising an identification test, free listing exercise, Likert scale, and closed and open-text questions. Knowledge was poor overall but highest for birds and mammals, followed by plants and lastly invertebrates. Few respondents correctly identified all six plant species, and none correctly identified all six invertebrates. Identification knowledge was positively associated with age, nature connectedness, and type of university degree. Relative awareness was high for mammals, similar for trees, flowers and birds, and low for invertebrates and other vertebrate groups. Respondents perceived colourful flying species as attractive but species with stinging structures as unattractive. Approximately half the respondents thought it was important for teachers to possess identification skills and two thirds thought that children had poor identification skills. The potential impacts of low invertebrate knowledge and awareness on environmental education are discussed and solutions proposed for teacher training, support, and classroom interventions.