Example of how to use GBIF to generate a species list for a specific are and use GloBI to retrieve interactions for those species. Please refer to http://ropensci.org to learn more about the packages.

gbif_globi_example.R

# install rgbif and rglobi libraries (see http://ropensci.org for more info)
install.packages(c('rgbif', 'rglobi'))

# define geometric bounding box (around california)
geo1 <- "POLYGON((-126 32, -114 32, -114 41, -126 41, -126 32))"

# retrieve a bunch of occurrences of Mustelidae with the geometric area
mustelidaeOcc <- rgbif::occ_search(scientificName='Mustelidae', fields='minimal', geometry = geo1)$data

# get any interactions records involving unique taxa occurrences at bbox geo1
interacts <- rglobi::get_interactions_by_taxa(unique(mustelidaeOcc$name))

# list interaction columns
names(interacts)
# [1] "source_taxon_external_id"   "source_taxon_name"         
# [3] "source_taxon_path"          "source_specimen_life_stage"
# [5] "interaction_type"           "target_taxon_external_id"  
# [7] "target_taxon_name"          "target_taxon_path"         
# [9] "target_specimen_life_stage" "latitude"                  
# [11] "longitude"                  "study_title"     

# number of available interaction records
count(interacts)
# 591

# print first six target taxon names
head(interacts$target_taxon_name)
# [1] "Orconectes propinquus"  "Crustacea"              "Canis lupus familiaris"
# [4] "Actitis macularius"     "Crocodylus acutus"      "Larus californicus" 

# print first six unique source taxon names
head(interacts$source_taxon_name)
# [1] "Lontra canadensis"     "Enhydra lutris nereis" "Enhydra lutris"       
# [4] "Taxidea taxus"         "Neovison vison"        "Mustela frenata"