Lookup species in eBird taxonomy

Given a list of common or scientific names, 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 or English common names, or a mixture of both. 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")
# note that species not in the ebird taxonomy return NA
ebird_species(species)
#> [1] "Setophaga fusca"      "Poecile atricapillus" "Cinclus mexicanus"   
#> [4] NA                    

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