Abstract
Online open databases are increasing in number, usefulness, and ease of use. There are currently two main global databases for spiders, the World Spider Catalogue (WSC) and the World Spider Trait (WST) database. Both are regularly used by thousands of researchers. Computational tools that allow effective processing of large data are now part of the workflow of any researcher and R is becoming a de facto standard for data manipulation, analysis, and presentation. Here we present an R package, arakno, that allows interface with the two databases. Implemented tools include checking species names against nomenclature of the WSC, obtaining and mapping data on distribution of species from both the WST and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), and downloading trait data from the WST. A set of tools are also provided to prepare data for further statistical analysis.
Highlights
Online open databases are increasing in number, usefulness, and ease of use
Spider researchers have always been at the forefront, with the World Spider Catalogue (2021; hereafter WSC) serving as a continuously updated reference on the nomenclature of the group
We present the R package arakno (ARAchnid KNowledge Online; Cardoso 2021) available from CRAN. It includes a suite of functions within the R environment (R Core Team 2021) allowing download of data from both the WSC and World Spider Trait (WST), checking valid species names, listing or mapping species distributions, and preparing trait data for further analysis
Summary
Online open databases are increasing in number, usefulness, and ease of use. In this respect, spider researchers have always been at the forefront, with the World Spider Catalogue (2021; hereafter WSC) serving as a continuously updated reference on the nomenclature of the group. It includes a suite of functions within the R environment (R Core Team 2021) allowing download of data from both the WSC and WST, checking valid species names, listing or mapping species distributions, and preparing trait data for further analysis. The package arakno contains the following functions (arguments): wsc() – Downloads the current, daily updated, list of valid spider names with their distribution data (list of countries) from WSC and returns a data.frame named wscdata to the global R environment.
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