Abstracts, XIV OPTIMA Meeting, Palermo (Italy) , 9-15

XIV OPTIMA Meeting, Palermo (Italy), 9-15 September 2013
eFAN : a free electronic database on flora of North Africa
MATHIEU D., BENHOUHOU S., CHAUVET S., CHATELAIN C., DE BELAIR G., DOBIGNARD A., EL MOKNI R.,
EL OUALIDI J., GHRABI-GAMMAR Z., IBN TATTOU M., LEGER J.-F., MATHEZ J., MEDAIL F., MEDDOUR R.,
MEDJAHDI B., PAVON D., RHAZI L., VELA E.
Tela Botanica Network, http://www.tela-botanica.org
A group of botanists from both shores of the Mediterranean has recently created a collaborative project
on North African flora with the aim of gathering botanists from different countries who are interested
in this subject. All the people involved in this project will be volonteers and the data will be provided
freely. A committee made out of active members has been organized around a Web platform dedicated
to this project.
Important initiatives carried out in recent years encouraged us to launch this project 1) The digitization
of herbarium plant types from North Africa (GPI program supported by the Mellon Foundation)
2) the publication of the synonymic index for North African flora by the Conservatoire et Jardin
Botaniques de Genève 3) the edition in 2010 of the Catalogue synonymique commenté de la Flore de
Tunisie by La banque de gènes de Tunisie 4) the publication of Moroccan flora by the Institut
Scientifique de l’Université Mohamed V de Rabat.
A preliminary meeting funded by the Agroplis fondation (Pl@ntNet project) was held in Montpellier
in June 2012 to set the bases of the project. We met again in Tunis in June 2013 to formulate the following
proposals:
- bring together all bibliographic data in one internet access point, with links to the existing sites which
distribute electronic documents about the North African flora;
- identify all herbaria containing a significant number of North African plants;
- describe the content of these herbaria in the shareable database Pl@ntNet-DataManager;
- give access to the herbarium plant types through the synonymous index of North African flora;
- gather field observations with Tela Botanica’s "On-Line Notebook" to download and to view real time
data on georeferenced maps;
- map biogeographical regions in order to display the distribution of North African plants;
- disseminate available data on flora: synonymy, vernacular names, ecology, distribution, photographs,
etc.;
- create identification keys for morphological groups of plants by using the expert system XPER 2 ;
- carry out actions in favor of training and promoting exchanges between countries : botany courses on
the Internet, field workshops, university exchanges, etc...
See: http://www.tela-botanica.org/page:projet_Afrique_du_Nord
The eFAN project is financially supported by the Yves Rocher Foundation / Institut de France.
56