The dartR package: a platform for population genomics

Ecology, population genetics and conservation biology are being revolutionised by the growing availability of genomic datasets. The Institute for Applied Ecology at the University of Canberra, CSIRO and Diversity Arrays Technology have been collaborating on an R language software package, dartR, that enables analysis of these large and informative multi-purpose datasets.

dartR is an open source platform that provides user‐friendly functions for data quality control and marker selection and a range of functions that explore patterns in population genomic (SNP) datasets. The use of dartR has grown rapidly, and the package is under constant development and improvement.

To keep up with the demands for new functionality, the Environomics FSP and The University of Canberra are employing a dedicated software developer to enhance the existing platform, to interface with the user community, and to crowd-source contributions to additional functionality.

The package is available on CRAN here, along with tutorials for its use. A development version is available on GitHub here.

DartR has a google group where it can be discussed and where troubleshooting by the community occurs.

Contact the developer of dartR at: glbugs [at] aerg.canberra.edu.au. For other queries contact Olly Berry.