A complete catalogue of algal taxa described by Pierre Compère

Pierre Compère started his scientific career as botanist in 1959 mapping the vegetation of the Lower Congo in Central Africa. Due to political difficulties following the Congolese declaration of independence, he was forced to return to Belgium in 1960. Three years later, he started working as a phycologist at the National Botanic Garden of Belgium. His first algological publication discussed the Belgian Hautes Fagnes, but Africa always held his special interest. Especially the freshwater algae from Chad, Niger, Sudan, Libya, Zambia, Senegal, Egypt, Zaire (D.R.Congo) and Equatorial Guinea attracted his attention. Later in his career he also studied material from Asia and Oceania, including Iran, Cashmere and Papua New Guinea and more recently material from Brazil (Fabri & Symoens 2000, Ector & Hoffmann 2000, van Ee & Cocquyt 2001). Although he did not visit most of these places himself, he studied material collected by other scientists including A. Iltis, P. Baert, J. Léonard, B. Van de Vijver, Th. Monod, H. Dumont, T. Lomema and R.D. Walmsley, resulting in the description of a large number of new taxa. The present paper demonstrates the importance of Pierre Compère as one of the few phycologists worldwide who dealt with a broad variety of algal groups, including Cyanobacteria.


INTRODUCTION
Pierre Compère started his scientific career as botanist in 1959 mapping the vegetation of the Lower Congo in Central Africa.Due to political difficulties following the Congolese declaration of independence, he was forced to return to Belgium in 1960.Three years later, he started working as a phycologist at the National Botanic Garden of Belgium.His first algological publication discussed the Belgian Hautes Fagnes, but Africa always held his special interest.Especially the freshwater algae from Chad, Niger, Sudan, Libya, Zambia, Senegal, Egypt, Zaire (D.R.Congo) and Equatorial Guinea attracted his attention.Later in his career he also studied material from Asia and Oceania, including Iran, Cashmere and Papua New Guinea and more recently material from Brazil (Fabri & Symoens 2000, Ector & Hoffmann 2000, van Ee & Cocquyt 2001).Although he did not visit most of these places himself, he studied material collected by other scientists including A. Iltis, P. Baert, J. Léonard, B. Van de Vijver, Th.Monod, H. Dumont, T. Lomema and R.D. Walmsley, resulting in the description of a large number of new taxa.
The present paper demonstrates the importance of Pierre Compère as one of the few phycologists worldwide who dealt with a broad variety of algal groups, including Cyanobacteria.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
The data for this catalogue was acquired in the first place by consulting all publications of Pierre Compère.Secondly, sev-eral databases such as BG-BASE which is the database used in the Botanic Garden Meise (Walter & O'Neal 2007), Index Nominum Algarum (Silva 2014), Algaebase (Guiry & Guiry 2014), AlgaTerra (Jahn & Kusber 2014) and the Catalogue of Diatom Names (Fourtanier & Kociolek 2011) were thoroughly searched.Finally the herbaria where the types were deposited have also been contacted.
The catalogue is composed as followed.The different algal phyla are ordered according to recent taxonomic insights starting with the Cyanobacteria, followed by the Euglenophyta, Bacillariophyta, Chrysophyta and Chlorophyta.Within each phylum genera and species names are listed in alphabetical order.Reference to the protologue for each taxon is given together with more detailed information on the type if available, such as where the types are housed, the name of the main collector and the collector number, date and locality of the sample.All publications by Compère were written in French or in English with one exception which was written entirely in Latin.In order to retain consistency, all information concerning the locality of the types written in French has been translated into English.Only the slides of the Bacillariophyta have been given a special BR code.The wet collections have a unique barcode which can be requested at the Botanic Garden Meise.In this case type and collector number are the same.
The holotypes of taxa for which P. Compère featured as first author are in most cases deposited in the National Botanic Garden of Belgium (BR), currently the Botanic Garden Meise.Apart from the collection of Compère, the collections of J. Léonard, Onclin, Baert, Iltis, Walmsley and Monod also are deposited in BR.The isotypes and paratypes are dispersed throughout various other herbaria worldwide: Natural History Museum, London, UK (BM), Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar-und Meeresforschung, Bremerhaven, Germany (BRM), Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris, France (PC), Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, USA (PH), Harvard University, Farlow Reference Library and Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany, Cambridge, USA (FH), Botanical Institute, Academy of Science of the Czech Republic, Třeboň, Museum of Natural History, Vienna, Austria (W), Laboratoire Géologique, Talence, France (TALE) and South African National Biodiversity Institute, Pretoria, South Africa (PRE).In the past isotypes also were deposited in the Van Heurck Herbarium (AWH) but although this herbarium is now permanently housed at the Botanic Garden Meise, it is still dealt with as a separate collection and the AWH numbering is kept.For taxa of which Pierre Compère was co-author, holotypes have been deposited in the associated herbarium of the first author such as the Université de Perpignan, France (USR 3278 CNRS-EPHE CRIOBE), Laboratoire d'Océanographie Biologique, Paris 6, France (LOB CNRS/UPMC), Ghent University, Belgium (GENT), Academy of Natural Sciences, Diatom Herbarium, Pennsylvania, USA (ANSP), California Academy of Sciences, USA (CAS), Eastern Michigan University, USA (EMC) and Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil (UPCB).According to the old accession list of BR, the entire algal collection of J. Léonard was deposited in the herbarium of the National Botanic Garden of Belgium, but up to now we were unable to locate all of the material.
Diatoms, described in collaboration with Riaux-Gobin, have no light microscopic slides as holotype but are based on scanning electron microscopy (SEM).The number between brackets given after the figure number represents the number of the SEM stub.However, in some cases only the SEM micrograph of the diatom valve is mentioned and no stub number is available.Riaux-Gobin et al. (2010) always explained very well their point of view that it is impossible to preserve durable specimens on stubs used for SEM study.
The acronym of each herbarium, according to Index Herbariorum (Thiers 2014), is given for each type.Abbreviations of the authorities follow the International Plant Names Index (2012).
To illustrate Pierre Compère's work we added a few pictures.LM images were taken with an Olympus BX51 microscope equipped with differential interference contrast and digital UC30 camera, SEM images with a JEOL 5800 LV operating at 20 kV.Drawings were scanned with an EPSON 10000 XL.

RESULTS
Approximately 1,600 of Pierre Compère's algal specimens, comprising untreated material as well as microscopic permanent diatom slides, were deposited in the collection of the National Botanic Garden of Belgium (BR), currently housed at the Botanic Garden Meise.