TROPICAL AFRICAN PLANTS (TAP)

Thematic Collections Network (TCN)

TAP TCN

The Tropical African Plants (TAP) Thematic Collections Network (TCN) was formed in September 2022 as a collaborative project funded by the National Science Foundation through the Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) program. TAP aims to (1) digitize specimens and associated data of African collections deposited in herbaria in the United States, (2) georeference and improve those data, and (3) share them openly with the global science and conservation communities.

About the Project

The Tropical African Plants Project is a large-scale effort designed to establish important new biodiversity data resources. The initiative began with a “proof of concept” project, supported by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation, and led by Prof. Alex Asase (University of Ghana), which resulted in digitization of more than 250,000 biodiversity data records from European and West African herbaria. The present effort, supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, will lead to the digitization of more than 1.1M herbarium specimens and associated data records from across tropical Africa housed in 21 U.S. herbaria. Links to both of these proposals are provided below.

JRS 2014: West African Plants Project (led by Prof. Alex Asase)

NSF 2022: Tropical African Plants Project

Geographic Focus

Specimens from the following countries are being targeted in this digitization project:

Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Cote D'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia. However, specimens from other countries in and near Africa may also be digitized as part of efficient workflows at individual herbaria.

The African Plants Portal is broader in scope than the funded projects, and is open to participation by any institution wishing to use the resource and/or contribute data. The ultimate goal of the portal is to enable an ever-expanding global storehouse of plant biodiversity data regarding Africa, to facilitate a new generation of analyses that will inform and illuminate the understanding and conservation of the continent's rich flora.

How to Participate: African Plants Portal

African-plants.org

For researchers and students interested in using data from this project, they are openly available and accessible via the African-plants.org portal.

Portal Management

Institutions with herbaria and other biocollections interested in contributing data should contact the Symbiota Support Hub, which has created and is maintaining the system of portals for biodiversity data.

Meetings

Planned

TAP TCN will host an open meeting at Botany 2026 in Tucson, Arizona (August 1-5, 2026) for anyone who is interested in collaborations with African plant botanists in the U.S. and/or who works with African plant data. The meeting date and time TBD.

Past

Asase, A., Bissiengou, P., & Peterson, A. T. (2025). The Tropical African Plants Initiative: Mobilizing large-scale herbarium data for science and conservation [Symposium]. XXIII AETFAT Congress. Accra, Ghana.

Satellite Meeting at XX INTERNATIONAL BOTANICAL CONGRESS MADRID 2024. Open Meeting-African Plants TCN Digitization, July 26, 2024. The meeting was open to any interested attendees at IBC and was an information session on this project and the utility of the data being generated by it.

Training and Broader Impacts

Projectwide, the funding from NSF for the Tropical African Plants TCN has made possible a number of opportunities for training and professional development. Specifically, project interns and trainees have been identified and (as necessary) hired, and training in collections management and data capture skills has begun. In parallel, georeferencing training activities have been completed in African partner institutions in four countries. Those training activities took place between June and September 2023 and initiated the georeferencing phase of the project.

Georeferencing Coordination

John Wieczorek, Rauthiflor LLC, Bariloche, Argentina

Paula Zermoglio, Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural (IRNAD)

This project is exploring a unique, intercontinental collaborative approach to enriching the basic data records held in the U.S. herbaria that are participating. That is, the project focuses on herbarium specimens that were originally taken from across Africa, and that are now deposited in herbaria in the U.S. The U.S. herbaria are imaging herbarium sheets and transcribing data to their institutional databases, but the crucial step of georeferencing the data records is being done by African students and scientists; this intercontinental collaboration reflects the dual nature of the data resource, both as documentation of permanent specimens in herbaria, and as research materials that will likely be used in largest part by African scientists.

Georeferencing coordination, led by John Wieczorek, Rauthiflor LLC, Bariloche, Argentina and Paula Zermoglio, Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural (IRNAD), began with training the georeferencing teams in Gabon, Ghana, Malawi, and Rwanda from June to August 2023. Recordings of each live class and Q&A session of the African Plants Georeferencing Train the Trainers Workshop are shared on YouTube at https://tinyurl.com/AfricanPlantsGeorefCourseYT .

Georeferencing Teams

L’Herbier National du Gabon, Libreville, Gabon

Nestor Engone Obiang (Georeferencing Team Lead)

Pulchérie Bissiengou

Raymonde Mboma

Centre for Plant Medicine Research (CPMR), Mampon-Akuapem, Ghana

Alex Asase (Georeferencing Team Lead)

Michael Akuamoah-Boateng

Giles Antwi-Boasiko

Yaw Appau

Seyiram Kumordzie

Ben Williams

Malawi University of Science and Technology, Limbe, Malawi

Tiwonge Mzumara-Gawa (Georeferencing Team Lead)

Sally Chingaipe

Naomi Damalankhunda Kaunda

Amedeus Haindi

Benford Kayuni Jr.

Ben Mbwana

George Malembo M'manga

Aubrey Nkhata

Deborah Sinclair

Dr. Tiwonge Mzumara-Gawa

African Plants Georeferencing Training in Malawi

Location: Salima, Malawi (September 28, 2024)

Focus: Georeferencing localities from Tanzania

During the workshop, the team finished working on localities from Tanzania (of the specimen records for this project). They helped each other with difficult localities, recapped key considerations for georeferencing, and oriented each other on how the project is informing other important activities in Malawi, like the IUCN National Redlisting and Key Biodiversity Areas assessments.

Location: T&D Lodge, Zomba, Malawi (May 2-3, 2024)

Focus: Georeferencing African plants

Description: This training session focused on training additional georeferencers in Malawi to georeferenced African plants, to increase the size of the team from three to eight members to enhance productivity. The participants engaged in hands-on activities and discussions to improve data collection and management techniques.

Dr. Gawa's team has been involved in recent National Redlisting Workshops, separate, but informed by this project. The plant data being georeferenced has been valuable in informing fauna species presence in Malawi, which are undergoing assessment based on IUCN standards.

Center of Excellence in Biodiversity and Natural Resource Management at University of Rwanda, Kigali, Rwanda

Beth A. Kaplin (Georeferencing Team Lead)

Fabrice Dufatanye

Pacifique Niyodushima

Alexis Nsabimana

Jean de Dieu Nsenganeza

Pascal Sibomana

Edmond Twagirayezu

Aime Sandrine Uwase

Project Management

This project is led by Dr. A. Townsend Peterson, University Distinguished Professor at the Biodiversity Institute and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas.

Collaborators

A. Townsend Peterson, lead PI, University of Kansas Center for Research (DBI-2223875)

Brent Mishler, PI, University of California, Berkeley, University Herbarium (UC) and Jepson Herbaria (JEPS) (DBI-2223876)

Mare Nazaire, PI, California Botanic Garden (RSA) (DBI-2223877)

Nico Franz, PI, University of Kansas Center for Research (DBI-2223878)

Alex Linan, PI, Porter Lowry, Co-PI, Patricia Barberá, Former PI, Missouri Botanic Garden (MO) (DBI-2223879)

Elena Kramer, PI, Harvard University Herbaria (GH) (DBI-2223880)

Nicole Tarnowsky, PI, New York Botanical Garden (NY) (DBI-2223881)

Bonnie L. Isaac, Subaward PI, Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CM) (DBI-2223875)

Maria Lucia Kawasaki, Subaward PI, Field Museum of Natural History (F) (DBI-2223875)

Timothy Whitfeld, Subaward PI, University of Minnesota (MIN) (DBI-2223875)

Tatyana Livshultz, Subaward PI, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (PH) (DBI-2223875)

D. Rabern Simmons, Subaward PI, Purdue University (PUL) (DBI-2223875)

Patrick Sweeney, Subaward PI, Yale University (YU) (DBI-2223875)

Partners

Michelle McMahon, University of Arizona (ARIZ)

Kevin Nixon, Anna Stalter, and Hannah Marx, L. H. Bailey Hortorium Herbarium at Cornell University (BH)

Peter Fritsch and Tiana F. Rehman, Philecology Herbarium at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT)

Rebecca Y. Kartzinel, Brown University (BRU)

Robert Johnson, Brigham Young University (BRY)

Alison Colwell and Daniel Potter, University of California, Davis (DAV)

Neil Snow, Pittsburg State University (KSP)

Laura Lagomarsino and Jennifer Kluse, Louisiana State University (LSU)

Sylvia Orli and Eric Schuettpelz, National Museum of Natural History (US)

Mitchell J. Power, University of Utah (UT)