Abstract:
Given the ongoing and often destructive impact of humans on
the natural environment, the need for sound and robust taxonomies
has become critically important (see for example Godfray & Knapp,
2004). The difficulty with naming organisms is especially acute in
African countries, where resources and facilities for taxonomic research
are limited (Klopper & al., 2002), and biodiversity is usually
relatively high. South Africa, for example, incorporates the world’s
richest temperate flora with 19,581 indigenous plant species from
2267 genera and 349 families of vascular plants (Germishuizen &
al., 2006; Steenkamp & Smith, 2006). Approximately 65% of the
country’s vascular plant species are endemic (Raimondo & al.,
2009), with many occurring in its three regions and 15 centres of
plant endemism (Van Wyk & Smith, 2001).
Expertise as well as preserved and living material of the biodiversity
of developing nations—typically former colonies of imperialist
nations—are often located in developed countries and
not available in the country of origin (Figueiredo & Smith, 2010).
The CBD recognises this impediment and in Article 17 calls on
signatory parties to exchange and repatriate information to facilitate
research (Global Taxonomy Initiative, 2001). To overcome the
obstacle of having to physically ship valuable—and essentially
irreplaceable—pressed plant specimens between herbaria around
the world, the African Plants Initiative (API) was conceived. The
notion was to scan type specimens and make electronic images of
them available online. This approach efficiently enables both virtual
repatriation of information, and access by researchers of other
herbaria to the most important accessioned material, thus removing
some of the constraints to taxonomic work. It has been six years
since the inception of the API, and this paper reports on its achievements
in South Africa, one of the founding countries of the thrust.
