Content area
Premise
Biodiversity researchers often need to answer the question: “Which species of taxon X have been documented in (or near) spatial polygon Y?” Online databases with billions of occurrence records, including vouchered specimens and citizen science records, can provide the answer; however, quick spatial processing of huge biodiversity datasets can be difficult, and many general‐purpose tools are constrained by dataset size.
Methods and Results
infinitylists is a Shiny application and R package that allows users to generate species checklists for a user‐specified taxon and area. It downloads taxon–country datasets (e.g., Madagascan geckos) from biodiversity data providers and uses an open source, column‐oriented data file for fast retrieval and visualization. Available as a mobile‐friendly web tool with preloaded data, it can also be run locally in R for very flexible applications.
Conclusions
infinitylists is an easy‐to‐use tool with applications including supplementing survey data, planning collecting expeditions, and informing gap‐filling. infinitylists is a complementary tool to existing databases to help field ecologists and naturalists globally.
Details
; Kar, Fonti 2
; Sauquet, Hervé 3
; Cornwell, William K. 2
1 Evolution and Ecology Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, CSIRO Atlas of Living Australia, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, National Herbarium of New South Wales, Botanic Gardens of Sydney, Mount Annan, New South Wales, Australia
2 Evolution and Ecology Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
3 Evolution and Ecology Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, National Herbarium of New South Wales, Botanic Gardens of Sydney, Mount Annan, New South Wales, Australia