This directory contains field observation of small animals. Each row is a single observation of an animal. Each column is a variable collected about where the animal was observed and other attributes about the animal. The data are stored in a comma separated value (.csv) file without column headers. There are 16 variables and 35549 observations.

Column names:
"recordID" – (character) unique identifier for each record
"mo" – (factor) month the measurement was taken
"dy" – (factor) day the measurement was taken
"yr" – (factor) the year the measurement was taken
"plot" – (factor) the plot the measurement was taken in
"species" – (factor) an abbreviation of the species name
"scientificName" – (factor) the full scientific name of the animal
"locality" – (character) a verbal description of the locale where the observation was made 
"decimalLatitude" - (numeric) the latitude at which the measurement was taken 
"decimalLongitude"- (numeric) the longitude at which the measurement was taken
"county"- (factor) – the county in which the measurement was taken
"state" (factor) – the state in which the measurement was taken
"country" (factor) – the country in which the measurement was taken
"sex" (Factor) – the sex of the observed animal
"hfl"(numeric) – the hindfoot length of the observed animal
"wgt"  (numeric) – the weight of the observed animal

to name the columns in r, use the following vector with the col.names parameter of read.csv

c("recordID", "mo", "dy", "yr", "plot", "species", 
                               "scientificName", "locality", "decimalLatitude", 
                               "decimalLongitude", "county", "state", "country", 
                               "sex", "hfl", "wgt"), 

to specify the class of each column, use the following vector with the colClasses parameter of read.csv

c(“character”, “factor”, “factor”, “factor”, “factor”, “factor”, “factor”, “character”, “numeric”, 
“numeric”, “factor”, “factor”, “factor”, “factor”, “numeric”, “numeric”)

Missing data is designated as follows:
- numbers = NA
- text = blank (“”)

The correct spellings of the scientific names of species observed in the dataset are as follows:

c(“Ammodramus savannarum",     "Ammospermophilus harrisii",            
         "Amphispiza bilineata",      "Amphispiza cilineata",                      
         "Baiomys taylori",           "Calamospiza melanocorys",
         "Callipepla squamata",       "Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus",
         "Chaetodipus baileyi",       "Cnemidophorus tigris",
         "Cnemidophorus uniparens",   "Crotalus scutalatus", 
         "Crotalus viridis",          "Dipodomys merriami",
         "Dipodomys ordii",           "Dipodomys spectabilis",
         "Dipodomys sp.",             "Onychomys leucogaster",
         "Onychomys torridus",        "Onychomys sp.")     

