Checklist of the mosses of sub-Saharan Africa

The scope of the checklist is all of sub-Saharan
Africa, together with the Atlantic and Indian
Ocean islands in the tropics. This does not quite
conform to the Index Muscorum divisions, as part
of Africa-2 is excluded to the north (the Sahelian
area within the tropics), and part of Africa-4 is
excluded to the south (the islands in the southern
Atlantic and Indian Oceans). For practical reasons
it was necessary to draw a definite boundary
round the region, even when this cut across
existing affinities, such as the north Atlantic islands
(Cape Verde is included, the Canaries, Madeira
and Azores are excluded). This differs slightly
from the combined Bryologia Africana and Flora
of Southern Africa areas, by excluding Mauritania,
and including the islands of Cape Verde, Ascension
and St. Helena .
All African countries apart from Sudan have been
covered by checklists although some of these are
now rather old (see map). All of these have been
entered into a database, and updated with later
publications. The publications on which the list
is based are shown in the references. I would be
grateful for pointers to any omitted publications,
or monographs that include African taxa, that are
not already included in the references. Where
data has been taken from an existing checklist, I
have not included all the individual references and
have instead just given the name of the list - e.g.
east African references will typically show (46)
(=Kis, 1985) as the reference. It will be necessary
to go to the source document quoted to get the
detailed references. The resulting list contains
2939 taxa, with over 9000 taxon/country occurrences
- an average of 3 countries (or part countries) per
taxon. All taxa in the source lists should appear
in the checklist as either accepted taxa, or as
synonyms or excluded taxa.
This document is not intended as a taxonomic
work. The quality of the data in this list is thus
variable in its taxonomic quality, although it
attempts to present the latest position for all taxa.
Some difficult and complex families where revision
is almost complete (e.g. Calymperaceae) are in a
good state, and the list represents a useful synthesis
of the current position. Where the process of
revision is still underway (e.g. Fissidentaceae)
there are now large numbers of synonyms, but
clearly a large number of taxa still to tackle. In other
areas work has hardly begun, such as
Sematophyllaceae and parts of Hypnaceae, and
this will continue to cause problems for those
attempting to identify plants in these groups. The
list will at least indicate the scale of the problem.
Producing and maintaining the list would have
been unmanageable without computer assistance,
and all data used in the list is held on the TAXA
system (115), and the main taxon distribution list
and list of references was generated directly from
TAXA. This system is available to anyone
requiring it, but it is being continually enhanced,
and so potential users should contact the author
for the latest version.
Although I have checked this list back against the
source documents, this project has taken some
time, and has led to considerable manipulation of
data to take account of synonyms and new publications,
and what was once correct may no longer
be so. Please let me know of any mistakes.
This checklist is expected to be a source and
foundation for future work, rather than a final
statement. Future updates are planned.
Assumptions, Comments & Compromises
A list this size cannot be produced without taking
a pragmatic view, and some will disagree with the
approach I have taken in some areas. Listed below
are some of the problems faced and assumptions
taken.
- The basic list has been built from the latest
‘authoritative’ list for the country concerned
- i.e. on lists that validate the occurrence in a
country via earlier lists or collections, as
shown on the map. Taxa mentioned in Index
Muscorum as occurring in Africa-2, 3 or 4 are
not included unless they have appeared in a
country list. Records not localised to a
country have been ignored, and taxa that are
not identified at least to subspecies or variety
level (i.e. forms) are marked as excluded. The
basic list has then been enhanced by data
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