reptSpecies: Retrieve Reptile Species and Taxonomic Information from RDB
In letsRept: An Interface to the Reptile Database

reptSpecies

R Documentation

Retrieve Reptile Species and Taxonomic Information from RDB

Description

Retrieves a list of reptile species from The Reptile Database (RDB) based on a search URL, and optionally returns detailed taxonomic information for each species. This function can also save progress to disk during sampling and extract species-specific URLs for further use.

Usage

reptSpecies(
  url = NULL,
  showProgress = TRUE,
  dataList = NULL,
  taxonomicInfo = FALSE,
  fullHigher = FALSE,
  getLink = FALSE,
  cores = 1
)

Arguments

`url`	Character string. A search URL generated via an advanced search on the RDB website or with `reptAdvancedSearch`.
`showProgress`	Logical. If `TRUE`, prints sampling progress in the console. Default is `FALSE`.
`dataList`	Optional. A data frame with columns `species` and `url`, used to extract taxonomic information from previously sampled species links.
`taxonomicInfo`	Logical. If `TRUE`, returns taxonomic information for each species, including order, suborder, family, genus, author, and year. Default is `FALSE`.
`fullHigher`	Logical. If `TRUE`, includes the full higher taxonomic hierarchy as reported by RDB (e.g., including subfamilies). Requires `taxonomicInfo = TRUE`. Default is `FALSE`.
`getLink`	Logical. If `TRUE`, includes the RDB URL for each species (useful for follow-up functions like `reptSynonyms`). Default is `FALSE`.
`cores`	Integer. Number of CPU cores to use for parallel processing. Default is `cores = 1`.

Value

If taxonomicInfo = FALSE (default), returns a character vector of species names.

If taxonomicInfo = TRUE, returns a data frame with columns: order, suborder (if available), family, genus, species, author, and year.

If fullHigher = TRUE, includes an additional column with the full higher taxa classification.

If getLink = TRUE, includes a column with the URL for each species’ page on RDB.

Examples


boa <- reptSpecies(reptAdvancedSearch(genus = "Boa"),
                                      taxonomicInfo = TRUE, 
                                      cores = 2)

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