Biogenetic reserves act as 'living laboratories' and are representative examples of various types of natural environment in Europe. They can consist of natural or semi-natural habitats and their selection is based on their value for nature conservation and protected status based on four criteria: 'typical', 'unique', 'rare' and/or 'endangered' which can be applied to habitats or species. The protected status must be adequate to ensure the conservation or management of the sites in the long term in accordance with fixed objectives.

This database records the collection of leaf or cambium samples of African plants (mostly Guineo-Congolian forest trees) conserved at the Evolutionary Biology and Ecology Unit of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (team lead by Olivier Hardy) for DNA analyses. The material is used for genetic analyses in the fields of phylogenetics, population genetics and phylogeography. Each sample has a unique identifier in the form of 2-3 letters (most often the initials of a collector) followed by a 4 digit number. A sampe corresponds to one individual plant collected in the field, or sometimes taken from an herbarium voucher conserved in a herbarium collection, which has been identified to species or genus level and geolocated.

The project Bridging Information on Tree Diversity in French Guiana, and a Test of Ecological Theories (BRIDGE) brings together researchers from nine different European research groups in tropical ecology, and seeks to improve our knowledge on the various dimensions of tree biological diversity in French Guiana. The project includes ten one-hectare old-growth forest tree plots across a range of geology and rainfall in French Guiana. The amount of niche conservatism across an ecologically relevant set of functional, reproductive, and defense traits have been measured in the field.