All species are hierarchically related to one another, and we use taxonomic names to label the nodes in this hierarchy. Taxonomic data is becoming increasingly available on the web, but scientists need a way to access it in a programmatic fashion that’s easy and reproducible. We have developed taxize, an open-source software package (freely available from http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/taxize/index.html) for the R language. taxize provides simple, programmatic access to taxonomic data for 13 data sources around the web. We discuss the need for a taxonomic toolbelt in R, and outline a suite of use cases for which taxize is ideally suited (including a full workflow as an appendix). The taxize package facilitates open and reproducible science by allowing taxonomic data collection to be done in the open-source R platform.

Biodiversity loss is a major challenge. Over the past century, the average rate of vertebrate extinction has been about 100-fold higher than the estimated background rate and population declines continue to increase globally. Birth and death rates determine the pace of population increase or decline, thus driving the expansion or extinction of a species. Design of species conservation policies hence depends on demographic data (e.g., for extinction risk assessments or estimation of harvesting quotas). However, an overview of the accessible data, even for better known taxa, is lacking. Here, we present the Demographic Species Knowledge Index, which classifies the available information for 32,144 (97%) of extant described mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. We show that only 1.3% of the tetrapod species have comprehensive information on birth and death rates. We found no demographic measures, not even crude ones such as maximum life span or typical litter/clutch size, for 65% of threatened tetrapods. More field studies are needed; however, some progress can be made by digitalizing existing knowledge, by imputing data from related species with similar life histories, and by using information from captive populations. We show that data from zoos and aquariums in the Species360 network can significantly improve knowledge for an almost eightfold gain. Assessing the landscape of limited demographic knowledge is essential to prioritize ways to fill data gaps. Such information is urgently needed to implement management strategies to conserve at-risk taxa and to discover new unifying concepts and evolutionary relationships across thousands of tetrapod species.

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Background. The number of individuals of each species in a given location forms the basis for many sub-fields of ecology and evolution. Data on individuals, including which species, and where they're found can be used for a large number of research questions. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (hereafter, GBIF) is the largest of these. Programmatic clients for GBIF would make research dealing with GBIF data much easier and more reproducible. Methods. We have developed clients to access GBIF data for each of the R, Python, and Ruby programming languages: rgbif, pygbif, gbifrb. Results. For all clients we describe their design and utility, and demonstrate some use cases. Discussion. Programmatic access to GBIF will facilitate more open and reproducible science - the three GBIF clients described herein are a significant contribution towards this goal.