taxize question

Package Use Questions
1

Hi all,

I would like to know if it is possible to check an IUCN species names using one specific database instead of that already included in the package, in my case http://research.amnh.org/vz/herpetology/amphibia/.

Thank you in advance,

2

thanks for your question @sayuriouchi

Can you elaborate on what you mean by “check an IUCN species name”?

We don’t currently have a way to use an arbitrary data source that’s not build in to the package. I did play around with this a few years back, but haven’t finished anything. It looks like we can make requests to that website and get back HTML, then we’d have to parse out the information from the HTML - problem is that can be very fragile since they can change the HTML any time and then taxize will break.

Do you know if AMNH will provide a dump of that data?

3

Thank you Skott for your answer.

So, I meant by “check an IUCN species name” a species list based on the available IUCN range maps.
Anyway, I have no idea if the AMNH provides this type of information. I’m gonna try to ask somebody, but I do understand how fragile the solution might be.

Thank you very much,

4

hmm, still not sure what you mean. Can you be more explicit. So you have a list of species names, correct? And IUCN has range maps. Then you want to check if each name in your species list has a range map? Or is in inside of some range? Or something else? Or the species list is from some IUCN range map?

I’d suggest asking if they will provide a “dump” of the data, any form is probably okay - and ideally they’d provide it somewhere to download on their website so we can automate interaction with it.