I am applying for Google Summer of Code 2013 with this “Biodiversity Visualizations using R” proposal. I am posting this idea to get feedback and suggestions from Biodiversity Informatics community. 
Blog Archives
GSoC Proposal 2013: Biodiversity Visualizations using R
Exploring distributions of Ensatina salamander subspecies using rvertnet by Neil Kelly
This week we have a guest blog post by Neil Kelley Last week, I stumbled on Vijay’s blog post demonstrating his new package rvertnet. Although I am a paleontologist, some of my research involves anatomical comparison between extinct species and extant relatives or ecological analogs, so I have some experience using VertNet to track down 
Blue Jay and Scrub Jay : Using rvertnet to check the distributions in R
As part of my Google Summer of Code, I am also working on another package for R called rvertnet. This package is a wrapper in R for VertNet websites. Vertnet is a vertebrate distributed database network consisting of FishNet2, MaNIS, HerpNET, and ORNIS. Out of that currently Fishnet, HerpNET and ORNIS have their v2 portals serving data. rvertnet has functions now to access 
Map biodiversity records with rgbif and ggmap packages in R
When I attended usrR! 2012 last month, there was an interesting presentation by Dr. David Kahle about the package ggmap. It is a package built over ggmap2 and helps us map spatial data over online maps like Google maps or Open Street Maps. I decided to give ggmap package a try with biodiversity data. So 
Map biodiversity records with rgbif and dismo packages in R
In the earlier post we generated maps from GBIF biodiversity records using maps and ggplot2 packages. We used world map with country borders for that. Now we will generate maps with google maps as base layer using dismo package. Like earlier we download data for Danaus chrysippus from GBIF using occurrencelist function into a data 
Map biodiversity records with rgbif, maps and ggplot2 packages in R
Global Biodiversity Information Facility or GBIF is an international consortium working towards making Biodiversity information available through single portal to everyone. GBIF with its partners are working towards mobilizing data, developing data and metadata standards, developing distributed database system and making the data accessible through APIs. At this point this largest single window data source covering wide spectrum of taxa and 
Zero Inflated Models and Generalized Linear Mixed Models with R.
Zuur, Saveliev, Ieno (2012).
