The Forgotten African Islands GBIF-BID Project.

Freshwater biodiversity remains relatively understudied in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially across the Indian Ocean Islands. These islands are characterised by unique biodiversity and high levels of endemism that are threatened by invasive alien species, and anthropogenic impacts such as climate change and land use change.

GroundTruth worked with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Biodiversity Information for Development (BID) project to address the gap in freshwater biodiversity knowledge for the Indian Ocean Islands. The project had many local and international research and implementation partners, with the majority of the funding coming from the European Union.

The project initially addressed the need to collate, digitise, and curate existing Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, Trichoptera (EPT), and diatom (single celled algae) data from the Indian Ocean Islands and get those data onto the GBIF international database. This was accomplished in collaboration with many amazing international partners, with a special mention to Dr Lyndall Pereira da Conceicoa and Dr Benjamin Price from the Natural History Museum, London and Dr Astrid Schmidt-Kloiber form the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna for their pivotal roles.

The project then undertook focused sampling effort on the islands to gather updated biodiversity information. GroundTruth oversaw the use of citizen science tools (with a focus on the mini stream assessment scoring system miniSASS) to create awareness and obtain new distribution records where possible.

By focusing on both capacity development and the delivery of integrated data to end-users, this project, aligned with the GBIF and Freshwater Information Platform (FIP) platforms, created the means to improve knowledge of Indian Ocean Islands freshwater biodiversity and assist freshwater conservationists and policy makers.

GroundTruth also facilitated collaboration between stakeholders and project partners both locally and internationally through several dedicated engagement sessions, including a Knowledge Dissemination Session and a specialist AFRESH.IO (African Freshwater Entomology Workshop, Indian Ocean) workshop.

This work supports International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) efforts, and fosters broad international collaboration between many partners for the recording and conservation of vital biodiversity in traditionally underrepresented regions in sub-Saharan Africa.