By AFP
A third of the species of tropical plants in Africa are potentially threatened with extinction, according to a preliminary estimate published Wednesday by the journal Science Advances.
The most authoritative list of threatened species is the famous “Red List” maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
While this list is relatively complete for mammals and birds, it is full of gaps when it comes to plants, only 10 percent of which have been assessed. These assessments are fastidious and time-consuming, and there are more than 350,000 plant species in all.
At-Risk
To work around this problem, a team coordinated by a botanist from the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, Thomas Couvreur, carried out a computer analysis of the status of more than 22,000 vascular plant species in tropical Africa.
To perform the analysis, they used information compiled in a database called Rainbio that is maintained by the French Foundation for Biodiversity Research…
