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INS Institutes --- B institute --- Berlin --- Germany --- botanical gardens --- dedication

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At the beginning of the 20th century, Otto Müller described over 100 new East African diatom taxa from algae samples, taken during the German "Nyassa-See- und Kinga-Gebirgs-Expedition". He published valuable drawings and wrote detailed descriptions, however, in German and in a journal which is not well accessible today. Later authors, however, regarded these early African taxa often as synonyms or as infraspecific taxa of European species. The renewed attention that is given in the last two decades to the diatom flora of East Africa makes it evident that Müller's taxa have to be reinvestigated, including light as well as scanning electron microscopy, in order to evaluate possible new or endemic species. This was recently done for his Surirella taxa, a typical component of the African Great Lakes diatom flora of which many species are endemic to this area. The study of permanent LM slides as well as original materials allowed us not only to choose lectotypes, respectively epitypes, but also to study valve variability, while detailed information on valve ultrastructure was acquired by SEM investigation. Additional data, originating from materials of later periods in the same region (e.g. Lakes Tanganyika, Malawi, Victoria, Edward), was incorporated in the investigation to study the variability in valve morphology and the African distribution of each species. Otto Müller's samples thus provide the means to study historical African diatom diversity which can be used as a baseline for modern biodiversity assessment. Moreover, to make this information available worldwide, type information and English description of each taxon are published in international journals and on the AlgaTerra Information System [www.algaterra.org] which has been developed and is kept updated by the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem (BGBM). High resolution digital photographs will also be available in the future on the API website [www.aluka.org]

BR Staff Publications [a] (paper in international, peer reviewed journal) --- Surirella --- historical collections --- herbarium collections --- B institute --- Bacillariophyta = Diatoms = Diatomeae