taxonomic data methods for R & Python


Scott Chamberlain ( @sckottie) and Zachary Foster

UC Berkeley / rOpenSci
rOpenSci


main collaborator on this work: Zach Foster

also an rOpenSci 2018 Fellow: Introducing the 2018 rOpenSci Research Fellows!

biologists have to deal with taxonomic names

challenges of taxonomic data


  • taxonomic data is hierarchical

  • "taxa" can be names, classifications of names, or ids

  • diff. sources of taxonomic data (e.g. NCBI vs. COL)

    • may have different names and ids for the same taxon

  • often associated with other data

    • ideally taxa filtering is linked to data

taxa: an R package

github.com/ropensci/taxa
install.packages("taxa")

  • classes to hold taxa, taxonomies, and associated data
  • flexible parsers to convert raw data to those classes
  • dplyr-inspired functions to easily manipulate classes
  • any filtering/subsetting keeps all data linked together
  • flexible base for other packages to build on

taxmap: user defined data mapped to taxonomy

taxmap: user defined data mapped to taxonomy

taxmap: user defined data mapped to taxonomy

manipulate taxonomic data


Subset taxonomy and data to one taxon: 
filter_taxa(x, taxon_names == "Plantae", subtaxa = TRUE)

Subset taxonomy to one rank: 
filter_taxa(x, taxon_ranks == "genus", supertaxa = TRUE)

Subset data and remove any taxa not in subset: 
filter_obs(x, "info", n_legs == 4, drop_taxa = TRUE)

Add a column to a dataset: 
mutate_obs(x, "info", bipedal = n_legs == 2)

pytaxa: a Python package

github.com/sckott/pytaxa   docs

pip3 install pytaxa

taxa/pytaxa plans


  • pytaxa parity with taxa

  • shuttle data between pytaxa & taxa?

    • protocol buffers?

  • arbitrary data backends? (e.g., sqlite db of taxonomy or user data)

  • mappings to Darwin Core terms

github.com/ropensci/taxa



github.com/sckott/pytaxa