Remove taxonomic authorities from scientific names

Strips author citations from scientific plant names while keeping the taxonomic structure that expert-system names depend on, so that names from different taxonomic backbones resolve against the canonical names and synonyms of an expert system. The genus and species epithet are always kept. Infraspecific rank markers (subsp., var., f., ...) are kept together with their epithet, and the ssp. abbreviation is normalised to subsp.. Aggregate and collective markers (agg., aggr., coll., s.l., s.str., s.lat.) stand alone and are kept in place, including when they trail a name with no following epithet ("Taraxacum officinale agg.") or follow an infraspecific epithet ("Aconitum napellus subsp. firmum s.l."). The sensu lato and sensu stricto qualifiers (in any of the forms s.l., s. l., sens. lat., sensu lato, the stricto equivalents, and the compact s.s.) are normalised to s.l. / s.str. and kept; a sensu <author> concept attribution (for example "aggr. sensu Buser") is dropped, to match the bare form the expert system uses as its canonical name. The hybrid sign (ASCII x or the multiplication sign) is kept: for a nothospecies ("Salix x rubens"), a leading nothogenus ("x Ammocalamagrostis baltica"), and a hybrid formula joining two taxa ("Betula pendula x pubescens", "Elytrigia repens x Leymus arenarius"), so a hybrid is never collapsed onto one of its parents. Names with fewer than two words are returned unchanged.

Usage

resy_clean_names(x)

Arguments

x

A character vector of scientific names, optionally carrying author citations (for example "Fagus sylvatica L.").

Value

A character vector the same length as x with author citations removed and taxonomic structure preserved. NA values are preserved.

Examples

resy_clean_names(c(
  "Fagus sylvatica L.",
  "Epipactis helleborine (L.) Crantz subsp. helleborine",
  "Senecio ovatus (G.Gaertn., B.Mey. & Scherb.) Willd.",
  "Taraxacum officinale agg.",
  "Festuca ovina s. l.",
  "Alchemilla vulgaris aggr. sensu Buser",
  "Mentha x verticillata aggr."
))
#> [1] "Fagus sylvatica"                         
#> [2] "Epipactis helleborine subsp. helleborine"
#> [3] "Senecio ovatus"                          
#> [4] "Taraxacum officinale agg."               
#> [5] "Festuca ovina s.l."                      
#> [6] "Alchemilla vulgaris aggr."               
#> [7] "Mentha x verticillata aggr."