One problem you often run in to is that there can be various names for the same taxon in any one source. For example:
library(spocc)
df <- occ(query = 'Pinus contorta', from = c('gbif', 'idigbio'), limit = 50)
unique(df$gbif$data$Pinus_contorta$name)
#> [1] "Pinus contorta Douglas ex Loudon"
#> [2] "Pinus contorta var. latifolia Engelm."
#> [3] "Pinus contorta var. contorta"
unique(df$idigbio$data$Pinus_contorta$name)
#> [1] "pinus contorta"This is fine, but when trying to make a map in which points are
colored for each taxon, you can have many colors for a single taxon,
where instead one color per taxon is more appropriate. There is a
function in scrubr called fix_names(), which
has a few options in which you can take the shortest names (usually just
the plain binomials like Homo sapiens), or the original name
queried, or a vector of names supplied by the user. scrubr
is no longer maintained and no longer on CRAN, but you can get the
package on GitHub at http://github.com/ropensci-archive/scrubr.