ORIGINAL PAPER Mobilizing metaphors: the popular use of keystone, flagship and umbrella species concepts Maan Barua Received: 29 November 2010 / Accepted: 24 February 2011 / Published online: 26 March 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract Misrepresentation of terminology is a major impediment for attempts at enhancing public conservation literacy. Despite being critically important for improving conservation practice, there have been few systematic analyses of the popular use of conservation terminology. This paper draws from science communication studies and metaphor analysis, to examine how keystone, flagship and umbrella species concepts are used and represented in non-academic contexts. 557 news articles containing these terms were systematically analyzed. Mammals featured in 60% of articles on keystones, 55% on flagships and 63% on umbrella species. Number of articles explaining the terms keystone (35%) and flagship (31%) was low, and keystones were the most misrepresented term. Keystones were metaphorically linked with balance, flagships with representation and umbrella species with protection. These metaphors influenced public interpretation of scientific terminology, oriented actions towards select species, and led to a valuation of such actions. Together, the findings highlight three important aspects of popular use of conservation terminology: (1) communication is largely biased towards mammals, (2) everyday language plays a vital role in the interpretation of concepts, and (3) metaphors influence peoples’ actions and understanding. Conservation biologists need to engage with issues of language if public conservation literacy is to be improved. Further evaluations of concepts with high public and policy relevance, systematic identification of communica- tion shortfalls, and linguistic assessments prior to promoting new terms are potential ways of achieving this. Keywords Conservation literacy Á Flagship species Á Goodhart’s law Á Keystone species Á Language Á Media Á Metaphor Á Umbrella species Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10531-011-0035-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. M. Barua (&) School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK e-mail: maan.barua@ouce.ox.ac.uk 123 Biodivers Conserv (2011) 20:1427–1440 DOI 10.1007/s10531-011-0035-y