Lookup species in eBird taxonomy

Given a list of common or scientific names, or species codes, check that they appear in the official eBird taxonomy and convert them all to scientific names, common names, or species codes. Un-matched species are returned as NA.

ebird_species(
  x,
  type = c("scientific", "common", "code", "all"),
  taxonomy_version
)

Arguments

x

character; species to look up, provided as scientific names, English common names, species codes, or a mixture of all three. Case insensitive.

type

character; whether to return scientific names (scientific), English common names (common), or 6-letter eBird species codes (code). Alternatively, use all to return a data frame with the all the taxonomy information.

taxonomy_version

integer; the version (i.e. year) of the taxonomy. Leave empty to use the version of the taxonomy included in the package. See get_ebird_taxonomy().

Value

Character vector of species identified by scientific name, common name, or species code. If type = "all" a data frame of the taxonomy of the requested species is returned.

See also

Other helpers: auk_ebd_version(), auk_version(), get_ebird_taxonomy(), process_barcharts()

Examples

# mix common and scientific names, case-insensitive
species <- c("Blackburnian Warbler", "Poecile atricapillus",
             "american dipper", "Caribou", "hudgod")
# note that species not in the ebird taxonomy return NA
ebird_species(species)
#> [1] "Setophaga fusca"      "Poecile atricapillus" "Cinclus mexicanus"   
#> [4] NA                     "Limosa haemastica"   

# use taxonomy_version to query older taxonomy versions
if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
ebird_species("Cordillera Azul Antbird")
ebird_species("Cordillera Azul Antbird", taxonomy_version = 2017)
} # }