Centers of High Biodiversity in Africa

Species diversity is commonly used as a criterion for determining the most important sites for conservation. The simplest method is merely to use species richness, but more sophisticated methods weight species in various ways. Further refinements can be made by combining two or more methods for one or more taxonomic groups. Data for Africa are limited and of variable quality, but “hotspots” can be identified provisionally, the Albertine Rift (where Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zaire meet) coming up most consistently. But the varying resutls produced by different methods almost certainly reflect some real differences, as can be seen both regionally (endemism at the Cape is high for plants but not for other groups) and locally (the species richness of forest trees and forest birds in Uganda are only moderately correlated). Hence, overall conservation policies are likely to be improved by the use of more than one criterion.