Jeannette Leica Chavoutier was a French naturalist and bryologist whose work focused primarily on the bryophytes of the French Alps. She spent her professional career as a primary-school teacher in small villages of Tarentaise, Savoie, while pursuing natural history in her spare time. During the 1970s she was active in the Société mycologique de Tarentaise, helping to broaden its activities beyond mycology to botany and other branches of natural history. She later served on the board of the Conservatoire d’espaces naturels de Savoie.
Her involvement in bryology began in the 1980s. In 1984, the Vanoise National Park commissioned Chavoutier and Philippe Pellicier to undertake the first bryophyte inventory of the Vanoise massif. Over the following five years they developed their knowledge with assistance from Patricia Geissler in Geneva and Maurice Contet; the resulting inventory was published in 1990. Chavoutier subsequently carried out surveys throughout Savoie and in neighbouring regions, as well as in Andorra, and contributed inventories for conservation organizations including the CEN Rhône-Alpes, the Marais de Lavours Nature Reserve and the ONF. She also published records and studies of individual bryophyte species and numerous introductory articles intended to make bryology more accessible.
References
Bull. mycol. bot. Dauphiné-Savoie – n° 257 (2025) / p. 34-42
Photography became an important component of her work. Using relatively simple equipment adapted to her microscope, she developed extensive photographic documentation of bryophyte morphology. Her photographs began appearing in scientific publications in the 2000s and she provided all the photographs for Les mousses et hépatiques de Païolive (2010).
A major part of Chavoutier’s work was devoted to documenting the bryoflora of Savoie. After years of field surveys, examination of historical herbarium material, bibliographic research and compilation of records, she published the 608-page Atlas des mousses, hépatiques et anthocérotes du département de la Savoie in 2013. The flora recorded in the atlas represented nearly three quarters of the bryophyte species then known from France. Between 2013 and 2023 she published seven updates, adding 164 taxa to the departmental catalogue.
In 2016 she published the freely available Glossaire illustré de bryologie, defining about 1,400 French bryological terms and illustrating them with nearly 500 photographs. An English version, prepared with the assistance of Janice Glime, followed in 2017. In 2018 she contributed, with Vincent Hugonnot, Florine Pépin and Thierry Vergne, to Bryophytes des Pyrénées-Orientales.
Chavoutier was subsequently closely involved in the preparation of Les Bryophytes de France. She was a co-author of the species accounts and produced almost all of the more than 4,000 photographs included in the first two volumes, published in 2021 and 2024. Her contribution to bryology was recognized (both with Vincent Hugonnot) by the International Association of Bryologists with the Hattori Prize.
Health problems increasingly restricted her fieldwork during her final years, and she concentrated on the bryoflora near her home in Aix-les-Bains. This local work nevertheless produced further records, including her detection of Plagiochila britannica, previously unreported from France. She continued preparing photographs and material for subsequent volumes of Les Bryophytes de France and a further update of the Savoie atlas until shortly before her death. She died in Aix-les-Bains on 18 March 2025, aged 80.
References
Bryological Times 160 June 2025
Legland et al. (2025) Bull. mycol. bot. Dauphiné-Savoie – n° 257 / p. 34-42
