PhD week 63: Geographic data extraction

A natural part of the taxonomic process is the collection of distribution data. These can be useful for figuring out species limits, and for determining geographical areas where some interesting biology may be found. They can also be used with other geographic data to get an idea of the spatial patterns of species diversity, or for inferring the environmental preferences of a species—the subject of a field called environmental niche modelling or species distribution modelling.

Some of the different data that can be used include climatic information such as that available from WorldClim, geological data (e.g. GNS' QMAP), or composite datasets such as the Land Environments of New Zealand (LENZ) dataset.

A nice little summary as to how one can do this sort of stuff in R is given on the The Molecular Ecologist blog.

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Websites:
Zegrahm Expeditions review of journey to Melanesia

Watched:
Star Trek (Original Series) Season One

Twelve weeks of Star Trek:
Star Trek Into Darkness