MAP LEGEND-- Conservation priorities quantitatively derived sing the WORLDMAP software (provided by Paul Williams, Natural History Museum), for 5% of Africa's plants (provided by Jon Lovett, University of York) and all of the continent's ~4000 species of birds, mammals, snakes and amphibians (data from Carsten Rahbek, Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen), mapped on a 1-degree grid. The colored cells depict the Upper Guinea contribution to the set of 1-degree cells which would most efficiently represent all of the species. Red rectangles are irrecplaceable because they contain the entire known distribution of one or more species; other colored cells are flexible areas for which alternatives are available.

The group's findings and exceptions are as follows:

• Taxonomic groups picked some areas because they had access to records that were not in the WORLDMAP database.
• Taxonomic groups picked some areas that were believed to be very likely important for their specific taxa, although there were no records confirming this importance.
• One specific area identified by the taxonomic groups, Massif du Ziama in GUinea, was left out by the biogeography group because all taxa included in the WORLDMAP database were well represented in other cells.
• The biogeography identified some areas that taxonomic groups ignored, because the WORLDMAP records for those areas were taxonomically or geographically dubious or extremely old (e.g., the eastern extent of forests in Southern Ghana).
• Finally, the biogeography group selected some areas that taxonomic groups missed, because they had apparently overlooked some key records.