Species list





















Species list


Select a species list



Upload a species list

Download the species list

Download your progress

Custom material


Choose here which of the species characteristics and image links available in the species list (e.g. columns ownhint_Growth_form and imagelink_2) and images from which image folders on the shiny server to show in the species overview and quiz.



Image folders

Quiz Controls


Shall all species in the quiz be shown with equal probabilities (uniform) or based on previous successes and failures (dynamic)?


Shall complete taxon names be required as answers in the quiz or shall binomial names of genus and epithet be sufficient, ignoring hybrid markers and infraspecific information?


General description

The BotanizeR Shiny application allows to test and improve your botanical knowledge for a defined set of species based on a defined set of images and ecological and morphological descriptions.

In the Species tab, you can retrieve all deposited information for each species.

In the Quiz tab you can practice your species identification skills. The app will show you random species and you are asked to provide the species name (case insensitive). You may browse through a selection of pictures and enable additional hints based on species morphological and ecological descriptions. The app gives feedback on whether your attempt was correct or not and if not, how different the actual name is and whether the genus was correct or not. The quiz keeps track of the species shown and answered correctly and uses this information to show species that ave been answered correctly less frequently and species which have not been answered correctly more frequently (if enabled). You can download the species list after practicing and upload it again to make use of the saved numbers of successes and failures when practicing again.

In the Setup tab you can choose which species to practice, either by choosing from a predefined set of species lists or by uploading a customized species list. You can also define which hints and images to make available in the Species overview and Quiz tabs based on all the resources available in this instance of BotanizeR and hints you added to the species list.

This Example

This particular instance of the BotanizeR Shiny app exemplifies two use cases from tropical regions. Here you can practice 113 common wayside plant species of lowland Jambi Province, Sumatra ( Rembold et al., 2017) or 309 common tree species from Lore Lindu National Park, Sulawesi ( Brambach et al., 2017). You can choose which of the Floras to practice species from and which additional hints to show.

General applicability

BotanizeR is highly flexible and easy to set up, allowing lecturers to define themselves the species list, picture base and species characteristics to show to their students. Technically, BotanizeR is an R-package which can be installed from GitHub. Tutorials on how to setup BotanizeR are vailable here. The quiz can be played within R or better RStudio or alternatively it can be made available via the package’s Shiny app. The Shiny app can be launched locally after installing the package or on a Shiny server to make it accessible to a broader audience. When using it locally students could be provided with a species list with descriptions and an image folder for download which can then be loaded from within the Shiny app and used for practicing. When launching it on a Shiny server, BotanizeR can be accessed online via an URL and species lists, descriptions and pictures can be made available right away within the app like exemplified here.



Sources

This instance of BotanizeR uses images and information provided by K. Rembold (Sumatra) and F. Brambach (Sulawesi) from Biodiversity, Macroecology and Biogeography; licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License ( CC BY-SA 4.0 ).


Authors

The BotanizeR R-package and Shiny app have been developed at Biodiversity, Macroecology and Biogeography by Patrick Weigelt & Pierre Denelle.


Citation

Weigelt, P., Denelle, P., Brambach, F. & Kreft, H. (2021) A flexible R package with Shiny app to practice plant identification for online teaching and beyond. PLANTS, PEOPLE, PLANET, https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.10226.


License

Coded under License GPLv3