XVI International Botanical Congess
The flora of Mount Kinabalu includes ca. 6,000 species in an area of about 1,600 km2. This highly diverse flora has resulted from special edaphic conditions (ultramafic substrates), frequent catastrophic droughts, small plant populations with limited gene flow because of the precipitous topography, and landslides and other disturbances that provide new open habitats. Several collaborators are studying the phylogeny and biogeography of exemplar genera using morphological and molecular data sets. Specimen databases now include more than 35,000 records. A geographical information system (GIS) is being used to produce a map that will document specimen locations and provide an objective basis for diversity analyses. An ethnobotanical survey, Projek Etnobotani Kinabalu (PEK), is determining how the local Dusun people classify and use the flora.