gbif.range - An R package to generate species range maps based on ecoregions and a user-friendly GBIF wrapper

Although species range may be obtained using expert maps or modeling methods, expert data is often species-limited and statistical models need more technical expertise as well as many species observations. When unavailable, such information may be extracted from the Global Biodiversity Information facility (GBIF), the largest public data repository inventorying georeferenced species observations worldwide. However, retrieving GBIF records at large scale may be tedious if users are unaware of specific tools and functions that need to be employed. Here we present *gbif.range*, a R library that contains automated methods to generate species range maps from scratch using in-house ecoregions shapefiles and an easy-to-use GBIF download wrapper. Finally, this library also offers a set of additional very useful parameters and functions for large GBIF datasets (generate doi, extract GBIF taxonomy, records filtering...). [gbif.range R project](https://github.com/8Ginette8/gbif.range)