match_knms: Match names with KNMS.

In barnabywalker/kewr: R Package to Access Kew Data APIs

Match names with KNMS.

Description

Use the Kew Names Matching Service to match taxon names to records in Plants of the World Online.

Usage

match_knms(names)

Arguments

names

A list or character vector of taxon names for matching. Must not contain missing values.

Details

The Kew Names Matching Service (KNMS) allows a user to submit taxon names for matching against records in Plants of the World Online (POWO). As far as I can tell, it uses exact matching as well as some rules-based matching to account for common orthographic variants and Latin mistakes.

Names can be submitted to KNMS with or without an author string. If a name can match to multiple different records, for instance with synonyms, KNMS will return multiple matches. As such, we recommend submitting names first with the taxonomic authority and then without if no match can be found.

KNMS allows multiple names to be submitted at once. However, it can be slow in returning results if too many names are submitted. For lots of names, the website provides an interface for submitting a CSV file.

Value

A knms_match object - a simple structure containing the match results and some statistics about the number of matches.

Examples

# match a name
match_knms("Poa annua L.")

# match a vector of names
names <- c("Myrcia guianensis", "Calyptranthes ranulphii", "Poa annua")
match_knms(names)

# tidy match results into a table
names <- c("Myrcia guianensis", "Bad plant", "Poa annua")
matches <- match_knms(names)
tidy(matches)

barnabywalker/kewr documentation built on July 5, 2022, 5:37 p.m.