Visit the webpage provided by the University of Hong Kong's Biodiversity Survey .
Inspect Table 2 , and see that fungi and bacteria do not get a mention.
The biodiversity database is good as far as it goes, but you will find that the database lacks a stand-alone quality and you will be deflected to other sources e.g. PhD or MPhil thesis or papers in journals such as the Memoirs of the Hong Kong Natural History Society. The latter is a very good source of local biodiversity studies, but may not be easy to access. We have some editions in the OUHK library.
The table does, however, give you a summary of some of Hong Kong's quite impressive biodiversity. Take care to note, too, that this table records the non-marine species. I do not know why the rather outstanding marine macro-algae of Hong Kong's coasts are left out, and find this surprising as the seasonality and interesting combinations of temperate and tropical algae are an outstanding part of the biodiversity of the HKSAR. We will look at marine algae again in this module when we visit Tung Ping Chau and this will help to rectify these shortcomings. I am surprised, too, that those important bio-indicators of air pollution, the lichens are neglected in this HKU biodiversity survey. Professor K C Ho has conducted lichen surveys from OUHK; there is an attractive book or Hong Kong lichens (Thrower 1988) which recorded 200 species twenty years ago; this was extended to 261 in 1999 (Aptroot and Seaward 1999). All this work on lichens has been done and should therefore appear in a biodiversity data bank such as that provided by HKU.
- 1626 reads
