Checklist of Lope-Okanda Reserve, Gabon, Africa Compiled by: Gordon McPherson Go to the Checklist (HTML) PDF Version (ideal for printing) Introduction The Lope-Okanda Game Reserve, in central Gabon, is part of a tropical rainforest as species-diverse as the forests of southeast Asia and tropical South America (Reitsma 1988, Gentry 1988). In spite of its great diversity and remarkably high level of endemism (Brenan 1978), the flora of Gabon remains severely under-collected (Floret 1976, Breteler 1989). The list of species that follows is the result of a collecting program undertaken with the aim of providing an inventory of the plant species of the Reserve and of thereby facilitating the primatological research of the scientists working at the Station d'Etudes des Gorilles et Chimpanzes, which is located in the northeastern part of the Reserve. The specimens collected are also of directinterest to the many botanists contributing to the Flore du Gabon, a multi-volume publication being co-ordinated by the Museum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris. Work on this project was supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Forestry, Environment and Natural Resources, Bureau of Science and Technology, of the United States Agency for International Development under NSF Grant No. BSR-9024745. Personnel of the herbarium of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique et Technique in Libreville greatly assisted the project and several different people, as indicated in the list in the following paragraph, conducted the actual collecting. The list includes 1030 species (September, 1995) but that number will grow as the number of as-yet-undetermined specimens shrinks and as further collecting continues. Updates will be made periodically (at few-monthly intervals) and will eventually include the incorporation of images of those species for which good photographs were made. Bibliography Brenan, J.P.M. 1978. Some aspects of the phytogeography of tropical Africa. Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 65:437-478. Breteler, F.J. 1989. Gabon, in: Floristic Inventory ofTropical Countries. Eds. D.G. Campbell and H.D. Hammond. New York Botanical Garden. Floret, J.J. 1976. Flore du Gabon. Boissiera 24:575-580. Gentry, A.H. 1988. Changes in plant community diversity and floristic composition on environmental and geographical gradients. Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 75:1-34. Reitsma, J.M. 1988. Vegetation forestiere du Gabon/Forest vegetation of Gabon. Tropenbos Technical Series 1. The Tropenbos Foundation, Ede, The Netherlands.