NEWS.md

In letsRept: An Interface to the Reptile Database

letsRept NEWS

Version 1.1.2 — 2026-06-22

• internal datasets:
• allReptiles updated to the current list of valid species (12,650)

• allSynonymsRef and allSynonyms updated (113,377 and 55,353 entries respectively)

• reptSync:

• fixed solveAmbiguous bug when the query did not match any names in the synonym list.
• added fuzzy matching to the solveAmbiguous option.

• silenced internal reptSearch outputs when cores = 1.

• reptAdvancedSearch:

• added verbose condition to warnings when no matches are found.

• reptTidySyn:

• ordered general output by query column

• ordered output by RBD column when filter = "merge" to facilitate visualization of which queried species to merge.

• reptSplitCheck:

• now accepts a vector of years in 'pubDate' so each species can be evaluated to a respective year.
• silenced internal reptAvancedSearch outputs when simple synonyms are found to keep console clean. Errors are still flaged.

Version 1.1.0 — 2025-10-20

• General:
• Official manuscript release https://journals.ku.edu/jbi/article/view/24329
• Package website release https://joao-svalencar.github.io/letsRept/
• improved functions documentation (corrected errors and missing information)
• updated internal datasets (RDB September 2025 version)

• updated vignettes

• internal functions:

• safeParallel modified to safely stop all clusters upon user interruption
• implemented safeRequest to safely address server workload

• clean_species_names, fixed hyphened names like "Simotes tri-notatus"

• reptAdvancedSearch:

• improved output in case of detecting single species (when searching for synonyms) = reptSearch

• reptCompare:

• implemented argument compareDataset to detect missing names in comparison with another dataset

-reptSpecies: - Only runs with parallel sampling, default is cores = 1.

• reptSplitCheck:

• implemented argument exact for optional search only for exact matches

• reptSync:

• status "synonymization" changed to "merge"
• try fuzzy match before giving status "not_found"

• added statuses "updated_typo" and "fuzzy_ambiguous" after fuzzy match

• reptSynonyms:

• Now works with vectors of valid names, does not require species links.
• Only runs with parallel sampling, default is cores = 1.

Version 1.0.1 — 2025-08-23

• Fixed CRAN test issues by skipping network-dependent tests.
• Made parallel calls safe on macOS (cores = 1 for tests).
• Minor bugfixes and test updates.

Version 1.0.0 — 2025-08-05

The package was renamed to letsRept

Major changes

• reptSync() was fully redesigned for improved performance and flexibility. This change breaks compatibility with previous versions.
• Added new function reptSplitCheck(). This function checks for potential taxonomic splits departing from a user defined date.
• Added new function reptTidySyn(). This function prints to the console the outcomes of reptSync and reptSplitCheck with an optional "filter" argument.
• Added new function reptCompare(). This function compares a user species list with the internal dataset or with a subset provided by users
• Added new function reptRefs(). This function retrieves the references and links to access them from a species account.
• Added new function reptStats(). This function summarizes higher taxa information.
• Added helper splitCheck() to support reptSplitCheck().

Other changes

• I updated and expanded the vignettes to include the major changes

letsRept documentation built on June 22, 2026, 9:09 a.m.