The network of protected areas in Madagascar was established from multiple prioritization processes under the objective of tripling the size of the protected areas within the island. It includes the Priority Areas for Plant Conservation in Madagascar, which is the result of the use of conservation informatics to determine complementary areas distributed outside the initial network of protected areas and consisted of a combination of areas with high floristic diversity and local endemism on the one hand, and areas with high concentrations of threatened species on the other hand.

This study aims to present the use of biodiversity informatics within the Madagascar Program of the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG), in order to evaluate the importance of the conservation of the Malagasy flora by this newly established network of protected areas and to improve the existing decision support tools in assisting conservation planning in Madagascar. To do this, we used data from herbarium specimens of endemic plant species extracted from the database 'Catalogue of Vascular Plants of Madagascar' (http://www.tropicos.org/project/mada). A geographic information system including all geo-referenced botanical data of the sample collections has been developed. We then used spatial analyses to observe the distribution of each endemic plant species against the network of protected areas geographic data. The results of the gap analyses are presented. Those results allowed us to understand the degree of the conservation of the Malagasy flora by the new protected areas network.