synonymize function

Combine selected entries in a taxon-range table to remove duplicates

synonymize(x, table = NULL, ids = table$tna, max = table$max, min = table$min)

Arguments

• x: Indices or values (taxon names) to combine
• table: Taxon-range table
• ids: Vector or column of taxon names (used for matching taxon names in x). Defaults to table$tna
• max: Vector or column containing maximum ages
• min: Vector or column containing minimum ages

Returns

A data.frame containing taxon names, maximum, minimum and mean ages, with ranges for the selected entries merged and superfluous entries removed (note that the first taxon indicated by x is kept as valid).

Details

This function is meant as an aid to manually editing species tables and remove synonyms or incorrect spellings of taxonomic name that result in an inflated number of distinct taxa being represented.

Examples

data(archosauria)
sp<-archosauria$sptab_Stegosauria
synonymize(c(32,33),sp)->sp
synonymize(grep("stenops",sp$tna),sp)->sp
synonymize(c("Hesperosaurus mjosi","Stegosaurus mjosi"),sp)->sp