CONSPECTUS OF THE VASCULAR PLANTS OF MADAGASCAR
The Madagascar Conspectus Project
The Conspectus of the Vascular Plants of Madagascar Project is an
international, multi-institutional effort involving the Missouri Botanical Garden (MO),
the Laboratoire de Phanérogamie (P) of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, the Parc Botanique et Zoologique de Tsimbazaza (TAN), and
the Centre National de la Recherche Appliquée au Devéloppement Rural (TEF), whose goal is to make information on all vascular plants occurring in Madagascar widely accessible.
The Madagascar Conspectus database is a subset of the larger TROPICOS database housed at the Missouri Botanical Garden, and currently exists in Madagascar in its PC-TROPICOS form. We plan to incorporate both in situ specimen-vouchered images and scanned illustrations, as well as utilize the geo-referenced specimen data for GIS analyses of distribution. The images will also be incorporated into an Interactive
Identification System to the families and genera of woody Malagasy plants currently under development.
The following images are arranged on individual family "home pages", and are linked to their specimen and taxonomic name records in the database. Each geo-referenced specimen record is in turn linked to the Xerox PARC map of Madagascar. Watch for additional GIS developments in the coming months.
Our hope is that the Madagascar Conspectus will both facilitate new and revised treatments for the ongoing Flore de Madagascar, as well as serve the needs of conservation organizations and the Malagasy people.
What's New:
Rediscovering Lost Species, a paper presented at the ICSEB VI Meetings, 9-16 September 2002, Patras, Greece.
On-line search of Gazetteer to Malagasy Botanical Collecting Localities.
Read Web versions of 2 Scientific Papers:
- Malagasy/Indo-Australo-Malesian Phytogeographic Connections, a paper from the International Symposium on the Biogeography of Madagascar, 26-28 September 1995, Paris.
- The Classification of Natural and Anthropogenic Vegetation In Madagascar, a paper from the International Symposium entitled "Natural and Human-induced Change in Madagascar" held at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago 2-4 June 1995.
Acknowledgments:
We gratefully acknowledge support from U.S. National Science Foundation grants DEB-9024749 and DEB-9627072, and from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Liz Claiborne and Art Ortenberg Foundation, LWO Inc., and the National Geographic Society.
Malagasy Families With Images
Botanical comments: George E. Schatz
This page was revised 11/21/05.
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