A collaborative research effort by institutions in the U.S., France, and Madagascar will result in a modern conspectus for the flora of Madagascar. Current information on the flora of Madagascar is incomplete and/or dispersed, and inadequate for addressing critical conservation needs. Utilizing the TROPICOS database system developed at the Missouri Botanical Garden, investigators will compile a checklist of all the vascular plants indigenous to and naturalized in Madagascar. The computer database will include place of publication, accepted synonymy, typification, overall distribution and distribution within Madagascar by province and protected area, habit, and vernacular names, all vouchered by specimens tied, to as great a degree as possible, to latitude and longitude, and hence, directly available to a GIS-based biodiversity inventory and planning center in Madagascar. Capture of data for the conspectus will involve: 1) extraction from all known literature at each of the collaborating institutions; 2) verification of type material, principally located at the Museum National d'Historie Naturelle (P) in Paris, and secondarily so at Kew (K) and the British Museum (BM) in London; 3) exhaustive inventory and computerization (and therefore annotation) of the existing collections in Madagascar at the Parc de Tsimbazaza (TAN) and FO.FI.FA. (TEF) herbaria in Antananarivo, as well as those at the Missouri Botanical Garden (MO), which, along with type material, will form the basis of vouchered distributional occurrence. Data from each of the collaborating institutions will be collated at MO, where investigators from the Malagasy institutions will receive training in botanical data collection and management, and its direct application to pressing conservation imperatives. A complete checklist of the vascular flora of Madagascar will serve to stimulate and facilitate further taxonomic work, while immediately providing critical data on the current conservation status of one of the world's richest, most unique, and highly threatened floras.
