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List all descendants of a taxon down to a target rank

Source: R/downstream.R
downstream.Rd

Returns every accepted taxon at downto rank that sits beneath taxon – for example every species in an order or family. The parent's rank is detected from the backbone, then descendants are read from the denormalized classification the backbone stores. Where children() gives the immediate contents of a genus or family, downstream() reaches an arbitrary depth.

Usage

downstream(taxon, backbone = NULL, downto = "species", verbose = TRUE)

Arguments

taxon

A single higher-taxon name (a genus, family, order, class, phylum, or kingdom).

backbone

A single backbone name or a taxify_backend object. NULL (default) uses the highest-priority installed backbone; name one that stores the higher ranks (e.g. "col") to reach above genus.

downto

Target rank of the descendants to return ("species" by default), or "any" for every accepted taxon beneath taxon regardless of rank.

verbose

Logical. Default TRUE.

Value

A data.frame of accepted descendants, columns: name, authorship, rank, family, genus, taxon_id, parent, parent_rank, backbone. Empty when taxon is not found, its rank is one the backbone does not store as a column (e.g. subfamily, tribe), or it has no descendants at downto.

See also

children() for the immediate level, taxify(), synonyms().

Examples

# Runs offline against the bundled example database.
old <- options(taxify.data_dir = taxify_example_data())

# Every species the backbone places in the genus
downstream("Quercus", backbone = "col")

options(old)