Abstract:

Since the 1990s, Taiwan’s academic community has been promoting the conservation, education, and research of biodiversity. The Administration authority passed the “Biodiversity Promotion Plan” in 2001 and the Research Agency established an independent Biodiversity discipline in 2002. Subsequently, several universities and the Academia Sinica either founded or reorganized biodiversity research institutes or centers to actively carry out related research. The Research Agency sponsors basic scientific studies, whereas the Agriculture Agency focuses on direct applications, including conservation, management, and utilization of natural resources. This article reviews Taiwan’s research achievements over the past 10 years by summarizing the contents in the “DIVERSITAS” chapter in the book of “Taiwan Global Change Research” (published in 2009). The excerpt covers taxonomy, long-term ecological studies, ecosystem modeling, climate change, phylogeography, genetic resources, habitat restoration, and database construction. We report the trends in publication year, discipline, habitat type, and study organism of all SCI (Science Citation Index) papers published from Taiwan in the past 10 years to gauge the capacity and progress of biodiversity research in Taiwan. Lastly, we report the problems and prospects of Taiwan’s future biodiversity research.

Key words: conservation, research of biodiversity, management and utilization, taxonomy, long-term ecological studies, climate change, genetic resources, habitat restoration, database construction