The Gishwati-Mukura landscape located in Rwanda’s Western Province was approved as a Biosphere Reserve in 2020. This region joins the Volcanoes Biosphere Reserve in north-west Rwanda, which was also approved as a Biosphere Reserve in 1983. The rehabilitation of the Gishwati-Mukura landscape and the creation of the national park has been made possible under the Landscape Approach to forest Restoration and Conservation (LAFREC) Project implemented by Rwanda Environment Management Management Authority (REMA) with the support of the Global Environment Facility through the World Bank. Rwanda’s fourth national park, Gishwati-Mukura is made up of two separate forests – the larger Gishwati and small Mukura, forming a total of 34 square kilometres plus a buffer zone. Long ago, a great swathe of Afro-montane rainforest stretched the entire length of the Congo-Nile Divide (the mountain range that separates these two distinct watersheds). Now, decades of illegal mining, livestock farming, deforestation, and resettlement—the latter occurring in the wake of the Rwandan Genocide—have reduced this mighty forest to a few fragile remnants. Unfortunately, the plant biodiversity checklist of Gishwati-Mukura National Park is underdeveloped and needs to be updated to reflect the existing plant biodiversity as much more published occurence data are now publicly available. Since the preliminary vascular plant inventory in 2017, staff at the National Herbarium of Rwanda have completed the databasing and/or received repatriated about 100,000 specimen records from international herbaria. This data contains much occurrence data from the Gishwati-Mukura Biosphere Reserve.
Purpose
To publish an updated taxonomically revised Gishwati-Mukura Biosphere Reserve annotated plant checklist through the Rwanda Biodiversity Specimen data portal and to initiate the first baseline reference library of genomic data for 100 rare and threatened plants in the Gishwati-Mukura Biosphere Reserve. We plan to develop this as a model which can be applied to the other 3 national Parks in Rwanda including Akagera, Nyungwe, and Volcanos National Park.
Methods
Compilation of a checklist occuring in the Biosphere from avaialable literature and herbarium specimen records. A field-based botanical specimen survey will collect targeted endemic and critically endangenerd and threatneend species. Plant specimens will be collected and deposited in the National Herbarium of Rwanda. Leaf samples will be stored in silica gel, given a unique voucher number. Standard DNA barcoding protocols (CBOLPlant Working Group, 2009) will be used to sequence the common barcode region for plants - "rbcL" and the "matK" genes. Samples will be sequenced in collaboration with the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, University of Guelph. Samples will be assigned to species using BLAST to cmpare sequences on GenBank and BOLD. Tree-based identifcation methods will be used if no match is found on Bold or Genbank.
Expected Results
The annotated checklist is expected to expand by as many as 175 newly recorded species including as many as 15 critically endangered plant species. One hundred species barcodes will be published to GenBank and BOLD. The data will be added to an additional 100 species currently undergoing DNA barcoding at the ACDB at the University of Johannesburg.
