Skip to contents

Classify the certainty of taxonomic identifications

Source: R/tax_certainty.R
tax_certainty.Rd

Check whether a given taxonomic name is certain or uncertain by screening for common substitutes, abbreviations, qualifiers, and notations for denoting the certainty of taxonomic identifications (see Details for screening values).

Usage

tax_certainty(
  taxdf = NULL,
  name = NULL,
  terms = NULL,
  certainty = c(1, 0),
  append = TRUE
)

Arguments

taxdf

data.frame. A data.frame with a named column containing the taxonomic names to be checked.

name

character. The column name of the taxonomic names you wish to check (e.g. "identified_name").

terms

list. A named list of uncertainty terms to screen name for. Matched values will be classified as "uncertain". A pre-defined named list of terms is screened for by default (see Details). These terms can be ignored (e.g. terms = list(species = NULL)), or replaced through this argument (e.g. terms = list(species = "sp1")). Note, screened terms are not case-sensitive.

certainty

vector. A vector of length two denoting how certainty should be coded. The first element of the vector denotes "certain" status (default: 1), while the second denotes "uncertain" status (default: 0).

append

logical. If TRUE (default), the returned object is a data.frame consisting of the input taxdf with a column denoting the taxonomic "certainty" appended. If FALSE, a two-column data.frame containing the input name and the taxonomic identification certainty status is returned.

Value

When append is TRUE, the input taxdf with an appended "certainty" column classifying each taxon (default). When append is FALSE, a two-column data.frame with input name and 'certainty' column classifying each taxon.

Details

This function screens name for common substitutes, abbreviations, qualifiers, and notations expressing uncertainty in taxonomic identifications. When any of these notations are present, the taxonomic name is considered uncertain, while in their absence, the taxonomic name is considered certain. A pre-defined named list of terms is screened for by default (i.e. list(subspecies = c("(?<!n\\. )ssp\\.", "(?<!n\\. )subsp\\."), ...)), with the following names and values:

  • subspecies: ssp., subsp. (while ignoring n. ssp. and n. subsp.)

  • species: sp., spp. (while ignoring n. sp. and n. spp.)

  • genus: gen. (while ignoring n. gen. and n. gen.)

  • family: fam. (while ignoring n. fam.)

  • indeterminable: indeterminabilis, indeterminata, indet., ind.

  • uncertain: incerta, ind., ?, "", ”

  • confer: confer, cf., cfr., conf.

  • dubia: dubia, sp. dub., nomen dubium

  • incertae: incertae sedis, inc. sed.

  • problematica: problematica

  • informal: informal

  • unavailable: NA

  • trace: ex., exuvia, exuviae

  • not_specified: NO_X_SPECIFIED, where X is any character string

Additional terms to screen for can be provided via the terms argument via a named list (e.g. terms = list(custom = "species1")). In addition, the pre-defined named list can be modified to omit, or update certain terms (e.g. terms = list(species = NULL) or terms = list(genus = c("(?<!n\\. )gen\\.")). Note, while this function intends to minimise false positives (e.g. use of "sp." over "sp" to avoid mid-name matches, ignoring "n. gen." (new genus) but flagging "gen."), it is the responsibility of the user to understand the scale of risk for screened terms with respect to the input data.

The pre-defined list is intended to be comprehensive, and is informed by:

  • Sigovini, M., Keppel, E., & Tagliapietra, D. (2016). Open Nomenclature in the biodiversity era. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 7(10), 1217-1225. doi:10.1111/2041-210X.12594 .

If you wish additional terms to be screened for by default, please raise a GitHub Issue.

Developer(s)

Lewis A. Jones, Bruna M. Farina

Reviewer(s)

Lewis A. Jones, Bethany J. Allen, & William Gearty

Examples

# Get internal data
data(tetrapods)
occdf <- tetrapods[1:100, ]
# Summarise taxonomic certainty
certainty <- tax_certainty(taxdf = occdf, name = "identified_name",
                           append = FALSE)
# Append uncertainty to dataframe
certainty <- tax_certainty(taxdf = occdf, name = "identified_name",
                           certainty = c("certain", "uncertain"),
                           append = TRUE)
# Turn off subspecies- and species-level screening terms (genus-level data)
certainty <- tax_certainty(taxdf = occdf, name = "identified_name",
                           terms = list(subspecies = NULL, species = NULL),
                           certainty = c("certain", "uncertain"),
                           append = FALSE)