Data in this book

This book uses data DOIs to preserve reproducible data downloads, as most data is downloaded from the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) using the galah package, the ALA’s R interface to downloading biodiversity data. At the beginning of each chapter, in the Prerequisites section, we have provided options for you to either download the identical dataset using these DOIs or reproduce the query using our code.

If you download data using a galah query (rather than a DOI), the results you return when running the examples might not exactly match results in this book. This difference arises because data in the ALA is constantly being ingested (including from previous years) and galah downloads data directly from the ALA. This means that using the same query after the date this book was last rendered—even a query for a specific time-period (e.g., 2010–2015)—might return different data today.

In general, that is a good thing; updates improve data quantity and/or quality. But they can affect reproducibility, too. Getting the latest data shouldn’t affect whether the example works correctly, but it may affect whether the results you return in your console match the results returned in this book. The main advantage to using Prerequisites sections is that data downloads are transparent and up-to-date.

There are a few datasets used in this book that were not retrieved from the ALA. To ensure reproducibility, we have provided download links to those datasets in this chapter.

Prerequisites

library(arrow)
library(dplyr)
library(readr)
library(here)

Data

bees

This is a subset of a larger dataset—Curated Plant and Invertebrate Dataset for Bushfire Modelling.

Braunsapis species hovering in front of a ghost gum tree flower.
Photo by Zig Madycki CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Int)

Click on the download button below to download as a parquet file. Save the parquet in your working directory and load it using the code below.

bees <- read_parquet(here("path", "to", "bees.parquet"))

inverts

This is a subset of a larger dataset—Curated Plant and Invertebrate Dataset for Bushfire Modelling.

Paralaoma mucoides on a rock.
Photo by Nick Porch CC-BY-NC 4.0 (Int)

Click on the download button below to download as a parquet file. Save the parquet in your working directory and load it using the code below.