Plant taxonomic expertise - SABONET

Overview
Plant taxonomic expertise is an inventory of local
and overseas taxonomists and other plant
diversity experts with knowledge of southern
African plants. The book contains the
biographical, contact, expertise and interest
information of more than 200 plant taxonomic
experts, as well as a selected bibliography of
publications.
This inventory supports the recommendations of
the DIVERSITAS/Systematics Agenda 2000
International Workshop, held at the American
Museum of Natural History, New York, in
September 1998, which recommends that
“national action plans should include the
development of a database of taxonomic
expertise for all relevant taxa.” (American
Museum of Natural History 1999).
We started the project in November 1997 by
sending a detailed questionnaire to
approximately 100 plant experts. Since then,
most of these questionnaires have been
returned; we have also handed out additional
questionnaires to people not reached by the
initial mailing. We started computerising the
information in November 1998, transferring the
information supplied by respondents to a
Microsoft® Access database. The database
contains detailed information for 202 experts and
covers 225 plant families and 1 300 genera.
Originally, the inventory targeted only plant
experts resident in southern Africa. Later,
however, we decided to extend the inventory to
include all taxonomists and other plant diversity
experts who have published work on southern
African plants. To make the inventory more
inclusive, we added the names and specialities of
the authors listed in List of taxonomic literature
of southern African plants (Meyer, Mössmer &
Smith 1997) to the database. To gather more
comprehensive information for these entries,
personalised questionnaires were sent out to the
individuals concerned. The details of persons
who responded to the questionnaire were
updated in the database. The book contains only
the details of those individuals who responded to
our questionnaires; the database, however,
contains the names of an additional 246 people
that we were unable to contact (see Appendix).
Publications lists submitted by the respondents
were entered in a ProCite database, which was
used to generate two bibliographies—listed by
author and listed by taxon name.
Sections
The main directory of experts, combined with
several detailed indices, makes it easy to find
information from a number of different starting
points. For example, you can look up the details
of a specific person in the alphabetical main
directory. Or, you can find out the names of
everybody interested in a specific plant genus or
plant family. You can also find information by
research interest, such as “Ethnobotany”, or
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
2
6%
26%
Age distribution
29%
24%
10%
20-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 61-70 71-80 81-90
Figure 1. The age distribution of the respondents.
Most respondents are in the 41–50 year
age group. Very few respondents were from the
20–30 year age group. This could indicate that
these botanists did not consider themselves
“experts” yet. There were no respondents from
the 71–80 year age group. n = 197.
Amateur
Certificate
Diploma
Bachelor's Degree
Honours Degree
Masters Degree
Doctorate
2.5%
0.5%
2%
5%
Qualifications
10%
27%
0%
5%
53%
Figure 2. Highest qualifications obtained by the
respondents. The analysis indicates that the
respondents are highly qualified: 94% have a
university degree. Over half the respondents
have a doctorate or equivalent degree. n = 198.
University of Pretoria
University of Cape Town
University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg
University of the Witwatersrand
University of Stellenbosch
University of Reading
Universidade de Lisboa
Rand Afrikaans University
University of Zimbabwe
University of the Orange Free State
Major universities
Rhodes University
8
6
6
6
5
4
4
11
14
21
Number of qualifications
Figure 3. The eleven universities from which
most respondents received their highest
qualifications. Most of these universities (64%)
are in South Africa, with the exception of the
universities of Zimbabwe, Reading, and Lisbon.
27