A Glimpse at the Diversity of Peru's Endemic Plants.

ppendemic

Overview

This package offers convenient access to a database containing 8030 accepted endemic plant taxonomic records from Peru. The records include taxa at species and infraspecific ranks, together with accepted names, family, genus, specific epithet, infraspecific taxonomy, authorship, publication details, and actual and nominal publication years.

The construction of the ppendemic package is built upon valuable data sourced from the renowned World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) database. The WCVP is an international collaborative programme initiated in 1988 by Rafaël Govaerts that provides high-quality expert-reviewed taxonomic data on all vascular plants. As a highly authoritative resource updated daily, WCVP offers comprehensive information on plant taxonomy and occurrence worldwide, serving as the taxonomic backbone for World Flora Online (WFO) and being incorporated into the Catalogue of Life Checklist via GBIF. Leveraging this data, the ppendemic package aims to present an up-to-date and novel compilation of Peru’s endemic plant species, tailored to the diverse ecosystems of the region.

By incorporating meticulously curated data from WCVP following the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN), this package offers users a reliable and accurate resource to explore, analyze, and gain deeper insights into the rich diversity of Peru’s endemic flora. The latest version (V-16, dated 04-06-2026) includes enhanced temporal bibliographic information with sophisticated year extraction capabilities, distinguishing between actual and nominal publication years for improved citation accuracy.

The current version expands the previously known list of 5,507 species presented in the Red Book of Endemic Plants of Peru to 8030 accepted taxonomic records. Because the database includes infraspecific taxa, this row count must not be interpreted as the number of distinct species.

The database spans 165 families. The families with the greatest numbers of endemic taxonomic records are Orchidaceae, Asteraceae, Piperaceae, Fabaceae, Bromeliaceae, Solanaceae, Melastomataceae, Araceae, Cactaceae, Rubiaceae. The enhanced dataset also includes 159 records where actual and nominal publication years differ.

Installation

You can install the ppendemic package from CRAN using:

install.packages("ppendemic")
# or
pak::pak("ppendemic")

Also you can install the ppendemic package from GitHub using the following command:

pak::pak("PaulESantos/ppendemic")

Getting Started

After installing the ppendemic package, you can load it into your R session using:

library(ppendemic)
#> ── Access Peruvian plant endemic data ─────────────────────── ppendemic 0.2.2 ──

• Use is_ppendemic() to check if taxa are endemic

splist <- c("Aa aurantiaca", 
             "Aa aurantiaaia",
             "Werneria nubigena", 
             "Dasyphyllum brasiliense var. barnadesioides",
             "Miconia firma",
             "Festuca densiflora")
is_ppendemic(splist)
#> [1] "Endemic"     "Endemic"     "Not endemic" "Endemic"     "Endemic"    
#> [6] "Endemic"

• The is_ppendemic() function is designed to work seamlessly with tibbles, allowing users to easily analyze and determine the endemic status of species within a tabular format.

tibble::tibble(splist = splist) |> 
  dplyr::mutate(endemic = is_ppendemic(splist))
#> # A tibble: 6 × 2
#>   splist                                      endemic    
#>   <chr>                                       <chr>      
#> 1 Aa aurantiaca                               Endemic    
#> 2 Aa aurantiaaia                              Endemic    
#> 3 Werneria nubigena                           Not endemic
#> 4 Dasyphyllum brasiliense var. barnadesioides Endemic    
#> 5 Miconia firma                               Endemic    
#> 6 Festuca densiflora                          Endemic

Citation

To cite the ppendemic package, please use:

citation("ppendemic")
#> To cite ppendemic in publications use:
#> 
#>   Santos-Andrade PE, Vilca-Bustamante LL (2025). ppendemic: A glimpse
#>   at the diversity of Peru's endemic plants.
#> 
#> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#> 
#>   @Manual{,
#>     author = {Paul E. Santos Andrade and Lucely L. Vilca Bustamante},
#>     title = {ppendemic: A glimpse at the diversity of Peru's endemic plants},
#>     year = {2025},
#>     doi = {10.5281/zenodo.5106619},
#>     url = {https://paulesantos.github.io/ppendemic/},
#>   }