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Pierre Devillers and Jean Devillers-Terschuren. 1998. Habitats of Africa. PHYSIS Data Base. Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences website, www/kbinirsnb.be/cb. Last updated 1999.

This section of the PHYSIS database of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences offers a framework to organise the habitats of the African realm in an ordered sequence, according to the same methodology as that used for the CORINE Biotopes Habitats of the European Community typology (Devillers et al., 1991), the Council of Europe’s A classification of Palaearctic habitats (Devillers and Devillers-Terschuren, 1996a), and the RBINS’s, European Community-sponsored, Habitats of South America (Devillers and Devillers-Terschuren, 1996b). The geographical area covered encompasses Africa and its nearshore islands, Madagascar, the Comoros, Seychelles and Mascarenes, the oceanic islands of the Gulf of Guinea, Ascension and St. Helena.

World compatibility and homogeneity of treatment were insured by anchoring the main structure to three sets of references:

- a set of complete, single-source, summaries of the world's habitats, relevant to coherence of choices in habitat placement within the hierarchy, primarily Walter and Breckle (1991) Ökologie der Erde, Rieley and Page (1990) Ecology of plant communities, Huetz de Lemps (1994) Les paysages végétaux du globe, Archibold (1995) Ecology of world vegetation;

- a series of world-scale treatment of broad habitat types, ensuring homogeneity of treatment on the plane of a given upper-order habitat unit, primarily the series Ecosystems of the world, edited by D.W Goodall, and equivalent works for habitat groups not yet treated in the series, notably taken from the series Handbook of vegetation science, edited by H. Lieth (wetlands), or Springer-Verlag, Ecological studies (montane forests);

- three continent-wide descriptions of vegetation and habitats ensuring homogeneity along the other plane, that of geographical relations within Africa, namely, Knapp (1973) Die Vegetation von Afrika, White (1983) The vegetation of Africa, Schnell (1976, 1977) Flore et végétation de l'Afrique tropicale.

The main African list is in construction and not yet available on-line. A pilot development covers the territory of Equatorial Guinea, including Bioko, Mbini and Annobon (Pagalu). Being an extract of the African data base, it necessarily contains incomplete sequences, as units within the African hierarchy that are certain not to occur on the territory of Equatorial Guinea have been removed, without alteration of the numerical sequence.



Acknowledgements

Jean Lejoly, Frank Feys, Raymond Labrousse, Juan Enrique Garcia, Françoise Dowsett-Lemaire have kindly provided us with reports and documents of limited circulation. Franck Steeenman, Remond Labrousse and Juan Enrique Garcia have considerably helped the field work of Roseline Beudels-Jamar. Several members of the Conservation Biology Unit of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences have participated in the African habitat catalogue through informative discussions, assistance with documentation or field work, in particular, Jean-Pierre Vande weghe, Marie-Odile Beudels, Nathalie Moulaert and Chris Kerwyn, who has also helped us with the finalisation of the document. Our colleague René-Marie Lafontaine has greatly contributed to all aspects of the Equatorial Guinea project and of the habitat typology. Charles Vander Linden prepared the web consultation version of the data base.

To consult the African framework click on the left button below (not activated at the moment), to consult the Equatorial Guinea development click on the right button; once the opening page of the base presentation is reached, browsing through the hierarchy is achieved via the book icon in the upper left corner, a search function and a complete list of references are offered through buttons in the left column. To obtain further information on the PHYSIS methodology click on the left button at the bottom of the page you are presently in. To return to the PHYSIS presentation page click on the centre button. To return to the home page of the Section of Conservation Biology click on the right button.

The citation of the Equatorial Guinea extract is:

Pierre Devillers, Jean Devillers-Terschuren and Roseline Beudels-Jamar, 1998. Habitats of Equatorial Guinea. PHYSIS Data Base. Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences website, www/kbinirsnb.be/cb. Last updated 1999.