New discoveries and plans for a BioBlitz!

I'm in the Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre (KMCC) this week to talk to the team here about progress on the Zavamaniry Gasy project. My last message was on 29th July 2014! I can't believe the months have flown by. I'm happy to report some impressive statistics on the project - since July we have added over 500 new observations (521 at time of writing), giving a grand total of 532 since we started. We are now up to 331 taxa and a healthy number of new members (25).

At present 'rakotoarinivo' has the highest number of observations with a stunning set of palms occurring all over Madagascar. However, he is fast being caught up by 'romer' who just posted his 100th observation. Well done guys! I particularly like a recent observation of a fungi from romer:

Blue Basidiomycota - can anyone provide an ID?!

In other news we had a meeting with our friends from Conservation International, Missouri Botanic Garden, the Rebioma Project, and the University of Antananarivo at the California Academy of Sciences office here in Antananarivo. I presented the project and we discussed plans for a collaborative BioBlitz to be held in September this year. This must be the first plant oriented BioBlitz in Madagascar! Very exciting! We'll keep you posted as the plans develop.

Steve

Posted on February 7, 2015 09:39 AM by stevenkew stevenkew

Comments

For those who might have missed it: the spectacular blue fungus has been IDed as Entoloma hochstetteri, a species otherwise known from New Zealand and India:
www.inaturalist.org/observations/1213487

Posted by jakob about 9 years ago

Wow, the blue fungi (Entoloma hochstetteri) was just added to the New Zealand $50 note. I wonder if it will ever make it on to the 10,000 Ariary note in Madagascar!!?
https://twitter.com/ukfungusday/status/650762393199489028?s=03

Posted by stevenkew over 8 years ago

Add a Comment

Sign In or Sign Up to add comments