Training of students in Dassa (Benin)

In January 2025, Professor Jean GANGLO visited the “Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Biosciences et Biotechnologies Appliquées de Dassa-Zoumé (ENSBBA)” at the “Université Nationale des Sciences, Technologies, Ingénierie et Mathématiques d’Abomey (UNSTIM)” in order to train the first cohort of students of that university in biodiversity informatics.

Indeed, this academic year (2024–2025), the master program in Biodiversity Informatics was extended to the University of Abomey in Center Benin, in the framework of the dissemination plan of the program to enable more achievements in academic capacity building of students in biodiversity informatics to fill the huge capacity gaps in that field in Benin and across Africa at large.

Professor GANGLO trained students in biodiversity informatics data. The main points of the course were about primary biodiversity data (occurrence data of species), secondary data (results of the use of primary data such as distribution maps of species), environmental climatic and non-climatic data.

This course was an applied training during which students were trained to download occurrence data from GBIF (www.gbif.org) and clean them to discard spatial and taxonomic errors. Data from WorldClim were also downloaded to assess climatic data at present and in the future through various General Circulation Models. Students explored the evolution of temperature and rainfall at occurrence points across Benin. They were quite amazed by these exercises on climate change impact.