mvh: An R tool to assemble and organize virtual herbaria from openly available specimen images

Abstract

Premise: Recent advances in imaging herbarium specimens have enhanced their use in biodiversity studies. However, user-friendly tools that facilitate the assembly of customized sets of herbarium specimen images on personal devices are still lacking. Methods and Results: Here we present the R package mvh (“my virtual herbarium”), which includes functions designed to search and download metadata and openly available images associated with herbarium specimens based on taxon or geography. We tested the functionalities of mvh by searching metadata associated with five sets of 10 vascular plant species and five sets of 10 terrestrial coordinates. The download function had a success rate of 99%, downloading 291 out of the 293 images found in the search. Possible reasons for download failure are discussed. Conclusions: As long as an internet connection is available, mvh simplifies the assembly and organization of virtual herbaria, thereby facilitating the investigation of novel empirical questions as well as trends in digitization efforts.