The tropical rainforest of Amazonia is one of the most species-rich ecosystems on earth, with an estimated 16 000 tree species. Due to this high diversity, botanical identification of trees in the Amazon is difficult, even at the genus level, often requiring the assistance of parataxonomists or taxonomic specialists. Recent advances in information technology tools offer a promising opportunity to develop user-friendly electronic keys to improve Amazonian tree identification.
Julien Engel, Louise Brousseau, and Christopher Baraloto developed an original multi-access electronic key for the identification of 389 tree genera occurring in French Guiana terra-firma forests, based on a set of 79 morphological characters related to vegetative, floral and fruit characteristics. Its purpose is to help Amazonian tree identification and to support the dissemination of botanical knowledge to non-specialists, including forest workers, students and researchers from other scientific disciplines. The electronic key is accessible with the free access software Xper², and the database is publicly available on figshare: https://figshare.com/s/75d890b7d707e0ffc9bf.
For now the key is restricted to French Guiana but Julien’s plan is to expand this work to the Guianas or perhaps more ambitiously to an electronic key for all Amazonian tree genera.
Examples of identification using GuiaTreeKey :
Reference:
Engel J, Brousseau L, Baraloto C (2016) GuiaTreeKey, a multi-access electronic key to identify tree genera in French Guiana. PhytoKeys 68: 27-44. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.68.8707
Contact:
Anyone interested in Julien’s project can contact Julien Engel (julien.engel68@gmail.com), and soon at the International Center for Tropical Botany (ICTB) at The Kampong in Coconut Grove, Florida.
