Exploration expeditions in the tropics: what is no longer needed, what is still needed and what is urgently needed? A review of aims and goals

Priorities of workers within the tropics are likely to substantially differ from those outside. Within much of the tropics, including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea many biologists do not view logging, which is generally the primary cause of modification of residual primary forest, as a likely cause of extinction except when followed by immigration and cultivation as it so often is in the Philippines and Indochina (and also some parts of Indonesia). These workers therefore anticipate increasingly intensive and diversified use of the forest flora as the area of natural vegetation declines. They want better access to appropriate knowledge to this flora for users, in the form of manuals in simple language with good keys based on field characters, and with field descriptions and information about ecology as well as distribution, and known potential or actual useful attributes. This requires collection of extensive field knowledge beyond museum specimens.