Ten years ago Raven (1988) wrote an article entitled `Tropical floristics tomorrow' in which he argued that there was an urgent need to undertake inventories of tropical plant species diversity because of the rapid rate of tropical rain-forest destruction. Therefore it is timely to report on the progress in describing and explaining variation of biodiversity in tropical rain forests. I base this review on a search of the 1997 editions of Ecology Abstracts, Ecological Abstracts and Forestry Abstracts.
