Introduction to the finbif package

William K. Morris

FinBIF aggregates Finnish biodiversity data from multiple sources in a single open access portal for researchers, citizen scientists, industry and government. FinBIF allows users of biodiversity information to find, access, combine and visualise data on Finnish plants, animals and microorganisms. The {finbif} R package makes the publicly available data in FinBIF easily accessible to programmers. Biodiversity information is available on taxonomy and taxon occurrence. Occurrence data can be filtered by taxon, time, location and other variables. The data accessed are conveniently preformatted for subsequent analyses.

Installing the finbif package

You can install the current stable version of {finbif} from CRAN,

install.packages("finbif")

You can also install the latest development version of {finbif} from GitHub,

remotes::install_github("luomus/finbif@dev")

Loading the finbif package

library(finbif)

Getting a FinBIF access token

To use the FinBIF API you must first request and set a personal access token. You can request an API token to be sent to your email address with the function finbif_get_token().

finbif_request_token("your@email.com")

Copy the access token that was sent to your email and set it as the environment variable FINBIF_ACCESS_TOKEN either for the current session,

Sys.setenv(
  FINBIF_ACCESS_TOKEN = "xtmSOIxjPwq0pOMB1WvcZgFLU9QBklauOlonWl8K5oaLIx8RniJLrvcJU4v9H7Et"
)
# Note: the above is not a real access token. Do not try using it.

, or by adding it to a Renviron startup file (see here for details).

Working with taxa

You can check to see if a taxon exists in the FinBIF database.

finbif_check_taxa("Ursus arctos")
#> [Ursus arctos] ID: MX.47348

If the taxon is in the FinBIF database its unique ID is returned. When a taxon is not in the FinBIF database it is reported as “not found” and for that taxa the list element is NA.

(taxa <- finbif_check_taxa(c("Ursus arctos", "Moomin")))
#> [Ursus arctos] ID: MX.47348
#> [Moomin      ] Not found
taxa[[1]]
#> Ursus arctos 
#>   "MX.47348"
taxa[[2]]
#> Moomin 
#>     NA

You can also specify the taxonomic rank when searching FinBIF and the search will be limited to the specified rank.

finbif_check_taxa(list(species = c("Ursus arctos", "Ursus"), genus = "Ursus"))
#> [species: Ursus arctos] ID: MX.47348
#> [species: Ursus       ] Not found
#> [genus:   Ursus       ] ID: MX.51311

The function finbif_taxa() can be used for a more general search for taxa in the FinBIF database. Searches can be exact, partial or likely (fuzzy matching). Information for a single taxon is returned when using exact or fuzzy matching, but multiple taxa, up to a limit, n, may be returned when using partial matching.

birch_search <- finbif_taxa("Betula pendula", 2, "partial")
birch_search$content

Click to show/hide output. 


#> [[1]]
#> [[1]]$matchingName
#> [1] "Betula pendula var. pendula"
#> 
#> [[1]]$nameType
#> [1] "MX.scientificName"
#> 
#> [[1]]$id
#> [1] "MX.37994"
#> 
#> [[1]]$scientificName
#> [1] "Betula pendula var. pendula"
#> 
#> [[1]]$taxonRank
#> [1] "MX.variety"
#> 
#> [[1]]$cursiveName
#> [1] TRUE
#> 
#> [[1]]$finnish
#> [1] TRUE
#> 
#> [[1]]$species
#> [1] TRUE
#> 
#> [[1]]$vernacularName
#> [[1]]$vernacularName$fi
#> [1] "vihtakoivu"
#> 
#> [[1]]$vernacularName$sv
#> [1] "vanlig vårtbjörk"
#> 
#> 
#> [[1]]$informalGroups
#> [[1]]$informalGroups[[1]]
#> [[1]]$informalGroups[[1]]$id
#> [1] "MVL.343"
#> 
#> [[1]]$informalGroups[[1]]$name
#> [[1]]$informalGroups[[1]]$name$fi
#> [1] "Putkilokasvit"
#> 
#> [[1]]$informalGroups[[1]]$name$sv
#> [1] "Kärlväxter"
#> 
#> [[1]]$informalGroups[[1]]$name$en
#> [1] "Vascular plants"
#> 
#> 
#> 
#> 
#> [[1]]$type
#> [1] "partialMatches"
#> 
#> 
#> [[2]]
#> [[2]]$matchingName
#> [1] "Betula pendula var. carelica"
#> 
#> [[2]]$nameType
#> [1] "MX.scientificName"
#> 
#> [[2]]$id
#> [1] "MX.37997"
#> 
#> [[2]]$scientificName
#> [1] "Betula pendula var. carelica"
#> 
#> [[2]]$scientificNameAuthorship
#> [1] "(Merckl.) Hämet-Ahti"
#> 
#> [[2]]$taxonRank
#> [1] "MX.variety"
#> 
#> [[2]]$cursiveName
#> [1] TRUE
#> 
#> [[2]]$finnish
#> [1] TRUE
#> 
#> [[2]]$species
#> [1] TRUE
#> 
#> [[2]]$vernacularName
#> [[2]]$vernacularName$fi
#> [1] "visakoivu"
#> 
#> [[2]]$vernacularName$sv
#> [1] "masurbjörk"
#> 
#> 
#> [[2]]$informalGroups
#> [[2]]$informalGroups[[1]]
#> [[2]]$informalGroups[[1]]$id
#> [1] "MVL.343"
#> 
#> [[2]]$informalGroups[[1]]$name
#> [[2]]$informalGroups[[1]]$name$fi
#> [1] "Putkilokasvit"
#> 
#> [[2]]$informalGroups[[1]]$name$sv
#> [1] "Kärlväxter"
#> 
#> [[2]]$informalGroups[[1]]$name$en
#> [1] "Vascular plants"
#> 
#> 
#> 
#> 
#> [[2]]$type
#> [1] "partialMatches"
#> 
#>


Getting occurrence data

You can download occurrence data from the FinBIF database as a data.frame with the finbif_occurrence() function.

finbif_occurrence("Cygnus cygnus", n = 100)
#> Records downloaded: 100
#> Records available: 57008
#> A data.frame [100 x 12]
#>               record_id scientific_name abundance lat_wgs84 lon_wgs84           date_time
#> 1  KE.176/5e9dd5782d0e…   Cygnus cygnus  1         62.79256  30.96101 2020-04-20 12:00:00
#> 2        JX.1108556#265   Cygnus cygnus  2         64.2081   29.03035 2020-04-19 12:00:00
#> 3         JX.1110250#40   Cygnus cygnus  20        63.12255  24.32082 2020-04-19 05:00:00
#> 4          JX.1110117#3   Cygnus cygnus  2         65.87333  24.28142 2020-04-19 17:00:00
#> 5         JX.1110052#46   Cygnus cygnus  2         61.13841  21.64607 2020-04-19 06:35:00
#> 6         JX.1110024#10   Cygnus cygnus  2         60.32418  22.39303 2020-04-18 12:00:00
#> 7          JX.1110008#3   Cygnus cygnus  10        64.17427  25.9137  2020-04-17 12:00:00
#> 8         JX.1109958#52   Cygnus cygnus  2         61.32291  28.56818 2020-04-17 05:45:00
#> 9          JX.1109939#4   Cygnus cygnus  2         61.2604   28.71105 2020-04-17 12:27:00
#> 10         JX.1109952#4   Cygnus cygnus  4         61.2641   28.70687 2020-04-16 11:33:00
#> ...with 90 more records and 6 more variables:
#> coordinates_uncertainty, any_issues, requires_verification, requires_identification,
#> record_reliability, record_quality

You can search for multiple taxa at once and filter the records with the filter argument.

finbif_occurrence(
  "Cygnus cygnus", 
  "Cygnus olor",
  filter = list(coordinates_uncertainty_max = 100)
)

Click to show/hide output.


See ?filters and vignette("v05_filtering") for more details on filtering FinBIF records.

Random sampling

It is possible to request a random sample of records instead of the last n records (or records ordered by some other variable).

Click to show/hide output.


Plotting occurrence data

The {finbif} package has a number of inbuilt functions for plotting (see e.g., breaks_xy() and hist_xy()). There is also an inbuilt dataset that can be used to plot the border of Finland (?finland_map). Together these utilities can be used to plot occurrences after they have been downloaded from FinBIF. For example, the following can be used to plot the density of Eurasian Jay occurrences from Finland.

Click to show/hide code.

Caching

By default {finbif} uses local caching for repeated API requests. This can be turned on or off on a per request or session basis. See ?caching for details.