To facilitate the our ability to identify pollen in the fossil record we have been building a searchable digital tropical pollen database. Our work builds upon the architecture provided by Bush & Weng (2007) for their Neotropical pollen database (Palaeoecology lab, Florida Institute of Technology). We have used Bush & Weng’s freeware tool and expanded it to include an additional 364 pollen and spore types from tropical Africa. The images are of pollen reference material collected over the career of Prof. Dan Livingstone and curated in the Department of Biology, Duke University; full collection details of each specimen are indicated on each individual electronic record. In conjunction with the open access publication “Atlas of the tropical West African pollen flora” (Gosling et al., 2013) we have made the entire updated pollen database available. We hope that this will prove to be a useful tool for palynologists working in Africa and the wider tropics and that it will encourage others to develop the database further.
To download the database click here (only Mac version available at moment).
Please feel free to contact me or add comments with regard to the database and how it might be improved.
REFERENCES
Bush, M.B. & Weng, C. (2007) Introducing a new (freeware) tool for palynology. Journal of Biogeography, 34, 377-380. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2006.01645.x
Gosling, W.D., Miller, C.S. & Livingstone, D.A. (2013) Atlas of the tropical West African pollen flora. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology. doi: 10.1016/j.revpalbo.2013.01.003
Ecology of the past 