Constraining matches to a geographic region • taxify

This vignette shows how to steer taxify()’s spelling corrections toward the species that occur where the data were collected. Two species can sit a single edit apart on different continents, and a recorder in Belgium who misspells a name meant the Belgian plant. With a region declared, taxify() prefers the fuzzy candidates recorded in that region. Plant ranges come from the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP, Govaerts et al. 2021) on the botanical regions of the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD, Brummitt 2001); marine ranges come from WoRMS distribution records rolled up to the Marine Ecoregions of the World (MEOW, Spalding et al. 2007).

Declare the region by name or code with the region argument of taxify().
Locate the records by coordinates with coords.
Narrow to native or introduced occurrences with range.
Look up the accepted region names and codes with taxify_regions().

Example

library(taxify)

The example uses a short regional list with two misspellings:

field_names <- c(
  "Gentiana acaulis", "Primula veris", "Pulsatilla vulgaris",
  "Gentiana acaulary", "Primula elatour"
)

By region name

A region name is matched case- and accent-insensitively at any of the three WGSRPD levels: a continent ("Europe", Level 1), a sub-continental region ("Middle Europe", Level 2) or a country ("Belgium", Level 3). Several regions union.

taxify(field_names, region = c("Belgium", "Netherlands", "Germany"))

The region acts on fuzzy candidates only. An exact match comes back unchanged:

taxify("Gentiana acaulis", region = "Europe")

#>         input_name    accepted_name       family match_type fuzzy_dist backbone
#> 1 Gentiana acaulis Gentiana acaulis Gentianaceae      exact         NA     COL

A TDWG code is read directly, so region = "BGM" and region = "Belgium" select the same region. An unrecognised name or code ("GRE" for Greece, whose code is GRC) is dropped with a warning, and the call runs without that constraint.

By coordinates

Coordinates are mapped to their WGSRPD Level 3 region by point-in-polygon, in the order c(lon, lat):

# Brussels
taxify(field_names, coords = c(4.35, 50.85))

A two-column matrix or data.frame of points, an sf object or a terra SpatVector work too; spatial objects are reprojected to longitude/latitude. Points and a region name can be combined, and their regions union.

occ <- data.frame(
  lon = c(4.35, 5.12, 4.40),
  lat = c(50.85, 51.21, 50.50)
)
taxify(field_names, coords = occ)

The boundary file downloads once and is cached. The point-in-polygon test runs natively by default; with terra or sf installed taxify uses that package, and options(taxify.pip_engine = "terra" | "sf" | "native") forces the choice.

Native, introduced, or present

By default any WCVP record counts as in-region, native or introduced. The range argument narrows that:

taxify(field_names, region = "Europe", range = "native")
taxify(field_names, region = "Europe", range = "introduced")

"native" suits work that should ignore naturalised populations: a species present in the region only as an introduction does not satisfy it, so its out-of-region native neighbour can win the tie. "introduced" selects the alien records for invasion work. range has no effect without a region.

Looking up regions

taxify_regions() lists the regions region accepts and filters them by a search term matched against the code and all three level names. The botanical regions ship with the package:

taxify_regions("Belgium", scheme = "wgsrpd")
#>   code    name   level2_name level1_name scheme
#> 1  BGM Belgium Middle Europe      EUROPE wgsrpd

Each Level 1 region expands to its Level 3 codes:

wgsrpd <- taxify_regions(scheme = "wgsrpd")
n_l3 <- as.data.frame(table(wgsrpd$level1_name), stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
knitr::kable(n_l3, col.names = c("Level 1 region", "Level 3 regions"))

Level 1 region	Level 3 regions
AFRICA	71
ANTARCTIC	12
ASIA-TEMPERATE	52
ASIA-TROPICAL	31
AUSTRALASIA	13
EUROPE	41
NORTHERN AMERICA	73
PACIFIC	28
SOUTHERN AMERICA	48

The same codes appear in the native-range output of add_wcvp().

Marine regions

Marine names use the marine_distribution asset, which downloads on first use. From then on region takes MEOW ecoregion, province and realm names and codes the same way it takes botanical ones; a province or realm expands to its member ecoregions.

taxify(c("Carcinus maenus", "Gadus morhua"), region = "North Sea")

#>        input_name   accepted_name     family match_type backbone
#> 1 Carcinus maenus Carcinus maenas Carcinidae      fuzzy     col
#> 2    Gadus morhua    Gadus morhua    Gadidae      exact     col

head(taxify_regions("Temperate Northern Atlantic", scheme = "meow"))

A point at sea maps to the MEOW ecoregion containing it and is unioned with the botanical lookup, so one coords argument serves a list of plants and marine animals. MEOW covers coastal and shelf waters; a point over a deep ocean basin belongs to no ecoregion and leaves those names unconstrained.

How the filter decides

For each input name, taxify() looks its fuzzy candidates up in the range source that owns the resolved region codes and drops an out-of-region candidate when another candidate survives. Three rules apply:

Exact and case-folded matches are never filtered.
A candidate with no range data is kept. Vascular plants and marine taxa are covered; a name outside both passes through unchanged, so a mixed list can carry a region safely.
When every candidate for a name is out of region, all are kept.

Marine ranges inherit the grain of the WoRMS locality they were recorded against, which runs from a single bay to an ocean basin. The median species spans 4 ecoregions and a quarter span exactly one; about 0.3% span more than half the ocean and are in region wherever you ask.

The constraint is most useful on regional field lists with misspellings, where the intended correction and a wrong one are a single edit apart. The related check in inspect() works after matching: it flags matched names that WCVP does not record in your region, using the same region, coords and range arguments.

Where to go next

Inspecting a name list for the geographic outlier check that uses the same region inputs.
Fuzzy matching for the candidate generation the region filter refines.
Enrichments for add_wcvp(), which attaches native range on the same TDWG codes.

References

Brummitt RK (2001). World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions, Edition 2. https://github.com/tdwg/wgsrpd

Govaerts R, Nic Lughadha E, Black N, Turner R, Paton A (2021). The World Checklist of Vascular Plants, a continuously updated resource for exploring global plant diversity. Scientific Data 8: 215. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-021-00997-6

Spalding MD, Fox HE, Allen GR, Davidson N, Ferdana ZA, Finlayson M, Halpern BS, Jorge MA, Lombana A, Lourie SA, Martin KD, McManus E, Molnar J, Recchia CA, Robertson J (2007). Marine Ecoregions of the World: a bioregionalization of coastal and shelf areas. BioScience 57: 573-583. https://doi.org/10.1641/B570707