Online ecology - Individual species description
June 19, 2017
R ecology open-data open-science
biomod2
kableExtra
knitr
magrittr
raster
rfishbase
rglobi
robis
sdmpredictors
sf
taxize
David Beauchesne, Kevin Cazelles, Rémi Daigle
Table of Contents
Online ecology
Let’s imagine that we are interested in a species in a given area and wish to know as much as possible about it. But, you can’t go out in the field because funding is running short. What we do have, however, is a certain knowledge of the open data science tools that are at our disposal. In a series of post about online ecology, we will find out exactly just how far these tools allow us to delve into the ecology of the species that interest us.
Online ecology posts:
Individual species description
This post focuses on the simplest yet still complicated aspect of ecology, i.e. describing a species as thoroughly as possible with the tools at our disposal.
Special thanks to the developers at ROpenSci, who built many of the R package used to access the open access tools we present in this post.
Setting up R
R version used to build the last update of this post
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Defining species and area of interest
We start by selecting the species and the area in which we are interested. For this post, we focus on the Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) in the estuary and gulf of St. Lawrence in eastern Canada.
Let’s set the parameters and create the spatial bounding box that we will be using for the area of interest. Note that all these parameters can be changed to extract information for other species in other habitats.
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Describe your species
Retrieve miscellaneous ecological information: Fishbase
We’ll start with a description of the species. First, let’s see what fishbase has to offer. This online data repository,
along with sealifebase, contains a lot of precious
information on marine and aquatic species all over the world and is accessible
through the package rfishbase
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Descriptors |
Attributes |
---|---|
SpecCode |
69 |
Species |
Gadus morhua |
autoctr |
33 |
StockCode |
79 |
EcologyRefNo |
1371 |
HabitatsRef |
1371 |
Neritic |
-1 |
Intertidal |
-1 |
Oceanic |
-1 |
Estuaries |
-1 |
Herbivory2 |
mainly animals (troph. 2.8 and up) |
HerbivoryRef |
5743 |
FeedingType |
hunting macrofauna (predator) |
FeedingTypeRef |
5743 |
DietTroph |
4.09 |
DietSeTroph |
0.179 |
DietTLu |
4.34 |
DietseTLu |
0.72 |
DietRemark |
Troph of adults from 7 studies. |
DietRef |
26813 |
FoodTroph |
4.29 |
FoodSeTroph |
1 |
FoodRemark |
Trophic level estimated from a number of food items using a randomized resampling routine. |
AddRems |
Opportunistic predator that forages mainly at dawn and dusk (Refs. 1371, 46189). Larvae feed mainly on zooplankton while juveniles prey predominantly on benthic crustaceans; adults feed mainly on zoobenthos and fish (Refs. 5743, 9604, 26813) including juvenile cod. Fish prey becomes more common in the diet with increasing body size (Refs. 1371, 89387). Adults may cover large distances during the feeding period (Ref. 89387). Young cod are also preyed upon by different fish species and octopus. Adult cod are prey items of top predators like sharks, rays, whales, dolphins, seals, and sea birds (Refs. 9023, 9581, 26954, 43651, 45735). In the Baltic it grows up to 5 kg weight in 7-8 years; in the North Sea it reaches 8 kg in the same time span . Natural mortality for adults of both stocks is assumed to be around M=0.2, resulting in a mean adult life expectancy and mean duration of the reproductive phase of 5 years (Ref. 88171). Parasites of the species include protozoans (trypanosome), myxosporidians, monogeneid, trematodes, cestodes, nematodes, acanthocephalan, hirudinid and copepods (Ref. 5951). |
Schooling |
-1 |
SchoolingFrequency |
sometimes |
SchoolingLifestage |
juveniles and adults |
SchoolShoalRef |
1371 |
AssociationsRemarks |
Generally considered a demersal fish although its habitat may become pelagic under certain hydrographic conditions when feeding or spawning. There is some evidence that cod leave the bottom and school pelagically to spawn in preferred temperatures when bottom tempetatures are unsuitable. Gregarious during the day, forming compact schools that swim between 30-80 m above the bottom, and scatter at night (Ref. 1371). Schooling behavior may be adaptive for feeding. Reproductive behavior during spawning involves the circling of a female often by only one male per spawning bout (Ref. 86779). |
SoftBottom |
-1 |
HardBottom |
-1 |
Rocky |
-1 |
SeaGrassBeds |
-1 |
Entered |
2 |
Dateentered |
1991-10-17 |
Modified |
2495 |
Datemodified |
2020-11-25 |
Retrieving taxonomic information: Taxize
We can also extract taxonomic information using the package taxize
.
This package allows you to extract and validate, among other things, the
taxonomy of millions of species by accessing an important number of online
databases accessible through their Application Programming Interface (API).
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══ 1 queries ═══════════════ ✔ Found: Gadus morhua ══ Results ═════════════════
• Total: 1 • Found: 1 • Not Found: 0
name |
rank |
id |
---|---|---|
Animalia |
Kingdom |
2 |
Chordata |
Phylum |
1821 |
Vertebrata |
Subphylum |
146419 |
Gnathostomata |
Infraphylum |
1828 |
Osteichthyes |
Parvphylum |
152352 |
Actinopterygii |
Gigaclass |
10194 |
Actinopteri |
Class |
843664 |
Teleostei |
Subclass |
293496 |
Gadiformes |
Order |
10313 |
Gadidae |
Family |
125469 |
Gadus |
Genus |
125732 |
Gadus morhua |
Species |
126436 |
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parentname |
parenttsn |
rankname |
taxonname |
tsn |
---|---|---|---|---|
Gadus |
164710 |
Species |
Gadus macrocephalus |
164711 |
Gadus |
164710 |
Species |
Gadus morhua |
164712 |
Gadus |
164710 |
Species |
Gadus ogac |
164717 |
Gadus |
164710 |
Species |
Gadus chalcogrammus |
934083 |
Sounds like this is consistent with what Wikipedia says!
Retrieving trophic informations: GloBI
We can also retrieve information on known biotic interactions involving our species
of interest. The Global Biotic Interactions
web platform contains thousands of empirical binary interactions for multiple types
of interactions, all over the world, and is accessible using the package rglobi
.
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interaction |
source |
target |
---|---|---|
eats |
consumer |
food |
eatenBy |
food |
consumer |
preysOn |
predator |
prey |
preyedUponBy |
prey |
predator |
kills |
killer |
victim |
killedBy |
victim |
killer |
parasiteOf |
parasite |
host |
hasParasite |
host |
parasite |
endoparasiteOf |
endoparasite |
host |
hasEndoparasite |
host |
endoparasite |
ectoparasiteOf |
ectoparasite |
host |
hasEctoparasite |
host |
ectoparasite |
parasitoidOf |
parasitoid |
host |
hasParasitoid |
host |
parasitoid |
hostOf |
host |
symbiont |
hasHost |
symbiont |
host |
pollinates |
pollinator |
plant |
pollinatedBy |
plant |
pollinator |
pathogenOf |
pathogen |
host |
hasPathogen |
host |
pathogen |
vectorOf |
vector |
pathogen |
hasVector |
pathogen |
vector |
dispersalVectorOf |
vector |
seed |
hasDispersalVector |
seed |
vector |
hasHabitat |
inhabitant |
habitat |
createsHabitatFor |
habitat |
inhabitant |
epiphyteOf |
plant/algae |
host plant |
hasEpiphyte |
plant |
plant/algae |
providesNutrientsFor |
host |
consumer |
acquiresNutrientsFrom |
consumer |
host |
symbiontOf |
symbiont |
symbiont |
mutualistOf |
mutualist |
mutualist |
commensalistOf |
commensalist |
commensalist |
flowersVisitedBy |
plant |
visitor |
visitsFlowersOf |
visitor |
plant |
ecologicallyRelatedTo |
source |
target |
coOccursWith |
source |
target |
coRoostsWith |
source |
target |
interactsWith |
source |
target |
adjacentTo |
source |
target |
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Making our search spatially explicit
Since we are interested in a specific area, making our search spatially explicit would be highly valuable. Luckily, there are tools that allow us to do just that.
Retrieving: occurrence data: OBIS & GBIF
OBIS is the Ocean Biogeographic Information System
and their vision is: “To be the most comprehensive gateway to the world’s ocean
biodiversity and biogeographic data and information required to address pressing
coastal and world ocean concerns.” We can get access to their HUGE database
through the robis
package.
Similarly, GBIF is the Global Biodiversity Information Facility
and it aims at providing free and open access to biodiversity data. This open
source platform can be accessed through the rgbif
package.
We only cover the OBIS package in this post since the targeted species is marine,
but visit rgbif
github repository for more
information on its use.
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