rMyCoPortal - an R package to interface with the Mycology Collections Portal

By

Krah, Franz-Sebastian
Bates, Scott
Miller, Andrew

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2019-01-14

Original Publication

Biodiversity data journal

Volume

7

Pages

1--8

Subjects

data portal , database , fungaria , Fungi , georeferencing , MyCoPortal , Natural history collections , R package , Specimens , Symbiota

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia Pensoft Publishers [2013]-

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.7.e31511
eLocator: e31511

 

Abstract

The understanding of the biodiversity and biogeographical distribution of fungi is still limited. The small number of online databases and the large effort required to access existing data have prevented their use in research articles. The Mycology Collections Portal was established in 2012 to help alleviate these issues and currently serves data online for over 4.3 million fungal records. However, the current process for accessing the data through the web interface is manual, therefore slow, and precludes the extensive use of the existing datasets. Here we introduce the software package rMyCoPortal, which allows users rapid, automated access to the data. rMyCoPortal makes data readily available for further computations and analyses in the open source statistical programming environment R. We will demonstrate the core functions of the package, and how rMyCoPortal can be employed to obtain fungal data that can be used to address basic research questions. rMyCoPortal is a free and open-source R package, available via GitHub.