Projects

RAINBIO (2014-2017) - African RAIN forest community dynamics: implications for tropical BIOdiversity conservation and climate change mitigation - Funded by FRB throught CESAB calls (France)

Project leader: T Couvreur

Scientists involved from our team : T Couvreur, G Dauby

The tropical rain forests of Africa harbor high levels of unique biodiversity, but are under immediate threat of extinction due to increasing anthropogenic activities and global warming. Protecting this important biodiversity reservoir requires a better understanding of plant distributions as well as past and future vegetation dynamics. Major initiatives have already generated large georeferenced databases of African plants, but these have yet to be combined and analyzed to provide a truly concerted view of rain forest biodiversity.

The goals of the project are two-fold and are aimed at the Central African region. 1) Produce a new openly-available platform containing an updatable online database of rain forest plant distributions including tools to perform species modeling and conservation status assessments. This will be achieved by compiling existing public and non-public datasets made available via the consortium. 2) Use this platform to model numerous rain forest restricted species distributions at several time intervals in the past and the future using ecological niche modeling. The results will provide an unmatched view of species-diversity dynamics over time in Central Africa and conclusions shall be made about the role of forest refugia for conservation. The compiled data will be the basis for suitable conservation strategies of African biodiversity and will be used for a better assessment of conservation status in the face of future climate change.

Associated publications:

Couvreur TL, Dauby G, Blach-Overgaard A, Deblauwe V, Dessein S, Droissart V, Hardy OJ, Harris DJ, Janssens SB, Ley AC, Mackinder BA, Sonké B, Sosef MS, Stévart T, Svenning JC, Wieringa JJ, Faye A, Missoup AD, Tolley KA, Nicolas V, Ntie S, Fluteau F, Robin C, Guillocheau F, Barboni D, Sepulchre P (2021) Tectonics, climate and the diversification of the tropical African terrestrial flora and fauna. Biological Review 96:16-51

Dagallier LPMJ, Janssens SB, Blach-Overgaard A, Mackinder BA, Droissart V, Svenning JC, Sosef MSC, Stévart T, Harris DJ, Sonké B, Wieringa JJ, Hardy OJ, Couvreur TLP (2020) Cradles and museums of generic plant diversity across tropical Africa. New Phytologist 225:2196-2213

Janssens SB, Couvreur TLP, Mertens A, Dauby G, Dagallier LP, Abeele SV, Vandelook F, Mascarello M, Beeckman H, Sosef M, Droissart V, van der Bank M, Maurin O, Hawthorne W, Marshall C, Réjou-Méchain M, Beina D, Baya F, Merckx V, Verstraete B, Hardy O (2020) A large-scale species level dated angiosperm phylogeny for evolutionary and ecological analyses. Biodiversity Data Journal 8: e39677

Enquist BJ, Feng X, Boyle B, Maitner B, Newman EA, Jorgensen PM, Roehrdanz PR, Thiers BR, Burger JR, Corlett RT, Couvreur TLP, Dauby G, Donoghue JC, Foden W, Lovett JC, Marquet PA, Merow C, Midgley G, Morueta-Holme N, Neves DN, Oliveira-Filho RT, Kraft NJB, Park DS, Peet RK, Pillet M, Serra-Diaz JM, Sandel B, Schildhauer M, Simova I, Violle C, Wieringa JJ, Wiser SK, Hannah L, Svenning JC, McGill BJ (2019) The commonness of rarity: Global and future distribution of rarity across land plants. Science Advances 5:eaaz0414

Stévart T, Dauby G, Lowry PP, Blach-Overgaard A, Droissart V, Harris DJ, Mackinder BA, Schatz GE, Sonké B, Sosef MSM, Svenning JC, Wieringa JJ, Couvreur TLP (2019) A third of the tropical African flora is potentially threatened with extinction. Science Advances 5:eaax9444

Cosiaux A, Gardiner LM, Stauffer FW, Bachman SP, Sonké B, Baker WJ, Couvreur, TLP (2018) Low extinction risk for an important plant resource: Conservation assessments of continental African palms (Arecaceae/Palmae). Biological Conservation 221:323-333

Droissart V, Dauby G, Hardy OJ, Deblauwe V, Harris DJ, Janssens S, Mackinder BA, Blach-Overgaard A, Sonké B, Sosef MSM, Stévart T, Svenning JC, Wieringa JJ, Couvreur TLP (2018) Beyond trees: Biogeographical regionalization of tropical Africa. J Biogeogr. 45:1153-1167

Sosef MSM, Dauby G, Blach-Overgaard A, van der Burgt X, Catarino L, Damen T, Deblauwe V, Dessein S, Dransfield J, Droissart V, Duarte MC, Engledow H, Fadeur G, Figueira R, Gereau RE, Hardy OJ, Harris DJ, de Heij J, Janssens S, Klomberg Y, Ley AC, Mackinder BA, Meerts P, van de Poel JL, Sonké B, Stévart T, Stoffelen P, Svenning JC, Sepulchre P, Zaiss R, Wieringa JJ, Couvreur TLP (2017) Exploring the floristic diversity of tropical Africa. BMC Biology 15:15

Dauby G, Zaiss R, Blach-Overgaard A, Catarino L, Damen T, Deblauwe V, Dessein S, Dransfield J, Droissart V, Duarte MC, Engledow H, Fadeur G, Figueira R, Gereau RE, Hardy OJ, Harris DJ, de Heij J, Janssens S, Klomberg Y, Ley AC, Mackinder BA, Meerts P, van de Poel JL, Sonké B, Sosef MSM, Stévart T, Stoffelen P, Svenning JC, Sepulchre P, van der Burgt X, Wieringa JJ, Couvreur TLP (2016) RAINBIO: a mega-database of tropical African vascular plants distributions. PhytoKeys 74:1-18

Deblauwe V, Droissart V, Bose R, Sonke B, Blach-Overgaard A, Svenning JC, Wieringa JJ, Ramesh BR, Stevart T, Couvreur TLP (2016) Remotely sensed temperature and precipitation data improve species distribution modelling in the tropics. Global Ecology and Biogeography 25(4):443-454