[R] splitting scientific names into genus, species, and subspecies

[Mark W. Miller]

I have a list of scientific names in a data set.  I would like to split the
names into genus, species and subspecies.  Not all names include a
subspecies.  Could someone show me how to do this?

My example code is:


a <- matrix(c('genusA speciesA', 10,   
              'genusB speciesAA', 20,   
              'genusC speciesAAA subspeciesA', 15, 
              'genusC speciesAAA subspeciesB', 25), nrow=4, byrow=TRUE)

aa <- data.frame(a)

colnames(aa) <- c('species', 'counts')

aa


# The code returns

                                   species  counts
1                     genusA speciesA     10
2                    genusB speciesAA     20
3 genusC speciesAAA subspeciesA     15
4 genusC speciesAAA subspeciesB     25



# I would like there to be 4 columns as below

genus  species    subspecies    counts

genusA speciesA   no.subspecies   10
genusB speciesAA  no.subspecies   20
genusC speciesAAA subspeciesA     15
genusC speciesAAA subspeciesB     25


I have tried using 'strsplit', but cannot get the desired result.  Thank you
for any help with this.


Mark Miller
Gainesville, Florida

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