Alex R. Chapman

Alex Chapman was for many years a Research Scientist at the Western Australian Herbarium in DBCA’s Science and Conservation Division managing the online publications and bioinformatics group there. He is a past editor of WA’s journal of systematic botany – Nuytsia and lectured in biodiversity informatics for the School of Natural Sciences at Edith Cowan University.

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Most recently he worked in WA's Yilgarn as part of threatened flora surveys around the floristically rich Mt Holland area.

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He has been the WA Chapter Chair for the Australian Citizen Science Association (ACSA) for 5 years.

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Previously, he worked for seven years as a Consulting Scientist with the environmental technology consultancy Gaia Resources. There he managed their Citizen Science program and worked in business development, project management, and in marketing for the company.

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He remains a Research Associate at the Western Australian Herbarium, and is affiliated with Taxonomy Australia, the Australian Citizen Science Association (ACSA-WA) and Climate Steps.

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His long-term systematic research interests are in a number of Australian genera of the vascular plant family Ericaceae. Alex has had a history researching the circumscription and systematic relationships within the largest genus Leucopogon, as well as the southern genus Monotoca and new western species of Melichrus.

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Alex has been invited to a number of international meetings to speak on aspects of building a global plant systematics information network and has presented lectures in Edinburgh, Dublin, London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Washington and Florida on the biodiversity informatics work of the Western Australian Herbarium and the Australian botanical community.

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During 1998-99 he held the position of 42nd Australian Botanical Liaison Officer (ABLO) at the Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in London. He has represented the WA Herbarium at the Nomenclature Section of two International Botanical Conferences (St. Louis, 1999 and Vienna, 2005).

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At the Western Australian Herbarium, much of his work focused on the development of corporate botanical information systems, such as WAHERB - the specimen database, and WACENSUS - the taxon names database along with descriptive datasets and methods for delivering maps and images online. In 1998 this work culminated in the launch of the 'FloraBase – the Western Australian Flora' web portal.

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In 2000 he co-authored 'The Western Australian Flora – a Descriptive Catalogue' comprising short codified taxonomic descriptions for every vascular plant taxon then known to occur in WA, which simultaneously provided content for the taxon profiles within FloraBase and a simple but comprehensive identification tool.

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Alex maintains a deep interest in bioinformatics as it applies to taxonomy and conservation – between 2002 and 2008 he was the Oceania representative of the Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) and with colleagues organised their annual meeting of over 200 delegates in Fremantle during October 2008. He is an inaugural member of the Herbarium Information Systems Committee (HISCOM), a working group of the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH).

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Alex studied botany and biochemistry at the University of New England and subsequently at Sydney University whilst working at the National Herbarium of New South Wales on the systematics of Leucopogon (Ericaceae) as part of the Flora of Australia project.

 

On moving to Perth in 1987 he worked on the genus Acacia (Fabaceae : Mimosoideae), focusing on the systematics of the Acacia bivenosa group and the preparation of detailed species descriptions, now published in two volumes of the Flora of Australia series. During this time he was also completed a degree in Computer Science at Murdoch University.