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Comparison · Infra & APIs
phyloatlas vs rapr
A side-by-side editorial comparison of phyloatlas and rapr — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
phyloatlas vs rapr: at a glance
What is phyloatlas?
An atlas of the tree of life that keeps publishing what it got wrong, and stopped shipping the trees it does not own.
This is a curated deposit of species-level phylogenies — 264 trees across 62 partitions, 247 of them time-calibrated — paired with a species-name dictionary of roughly 638,000 standardized labels and per-tree provenance. It is moving through peer review at Methods in Ecology and Evolution, and the release stream is essentially a public erratum log: eight releases in five weeks, each reconciling the deposit against source papers, the manuscript, and its own metadata. The most recent replaced the turtle canonical with a 274-tip ultrametric chronogram after the previous tree failed time-calibration integrity checks.
What is rapr?
rapr generalises its Rangeland Analysis Platform API access one endpoint at a time
rapr pulls Rangeland Analysis Platform data into R — vegetation cover and production rasters derived from Landsat and Sentinel-2, plus the tabular summary APIs. The 1.1.3 release replaces the single-purpose table function with a general get_rap_table() covering the cover, coverMeteorology, production and production16day endpoints. The package reached CRAN in 2025 and is maintained by brownag, who also maintains the GeoPackage interface gpkg.
phyloatlas vs rapr: editorial side-by-side
phyloatlas
0.0INFRA · APIS
An atlas of the tree of life that keeps publishing what it got wrong, and stopped shipping the trees it does not own.
◆ Current state
This is a curated deposit of species-level phylogenies — 264 trees across 62 partitions, 247 of them time-calibrated — paired with a species-name dictionary of roughly 638,000 standardized labels and per-tree provenance. It is moving through peer review at Methods in Ecology and Evolution, and the release stream is essentially a public erratum log: eight releases in five weeks, each reconciling the deposit against source papers, the manuscript, and its own metadata. The most recent replaced the turtle canonical with a 274-tip ultrametric chronogram after the previous tree failed time-calibration integrity checks.
◆ Where it's heading
The project's defining decision is that it archives the recipe rather than the corpus. Since 1.0.3 the Zenodo deposit holds metadata, provenance, and standardization code while the tree files live at their original sources, and the same principle was applied again when the TimeTree-of-Life was removed at the TimeTree project's request and reduced to a citation. What makes the correction log unusual is its direction: partitions keep getting reclassified from dated to undated as verification confirms the source papers described chronograms they never deposited. The atlas is being built to be honest about archival uncertainty rather than to maximize coverage.
◆ Prediction
The release cadence is driven by the manuscript review cycle, so expect corrections to continue until MEE acceptance and then slow sharply; the open thread most likely to produce the next one is the remaining recoverable archival uncertainty flagged across non-Condamine dated source trees.
rapr
0.0INFRA · APIS
rapr generalises its Rangeland Analysis Platform API access one endpoint at a time
◆ Current state
rapr pulls Rangeland Analysis Platform data into R — vegetation cover and production rasters derived from Landsat and Sentinel-2, plus the tabular summary APIs. The 1.1.3 release replaces the single-purpose table function with a general get_rap_table() covering the cover, coverMeteorology, production and production16day endpoints. The package reached CRAN in 2025 and is maintained by brownag, who also maintains the GeoPackage interface gpkg.
◆ Where it's heading
The shape is familiar for a young API client: add access to one endpoint, then generalise it once a second endpoint proves the pattern. get_rap_production16day_table() arrived in 1.1.0 and was deprecated three releases later in favour of a product argument. Between those, the work was error handling — empty geometries, server-side HTTP failures, warning timing — the unglamorous half of wrapping a remote service. The 1.0.0 release had already set the ambition by exposing both the 30m Landsat and 10m Sentinel-2 sources behind one argument.
◆ Prediction
Expect the remaining RAP endpoints to be folded into get_rap_table() as they are needed, and the deprecated 16-day function to be removed once the general interface has been out long enough.
Alternatives to phyloatlas and rapr
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either phyloatlas or rapr.
forestploter
A forest plot package that keeps handing users control of one more graphical detail.
ggInterval
Interval-valued data plotting, spending 2026 making its function names and examples survive CRAN.
rgm
A microbiome network model that got itself un-archived by deleting the dependency that killed it.
contagionchannels
Three releases in ten days, every one of them a CRAN reviewer's correction rather than a code change.
tidyaudit
Pipeline provenance for tidyverse workflows, recording what changed at each step without keeping the data.
See all phyloatlas alternatives → · See all rapr alternatives →
Recent activity from phyloatlas and rapr
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agophyloatlasv1.0.8 — turtle chronogram canonical; MEE integrity pass
- 1mo agophyloatlasv1.0.7 — restore species-name dictionary
- 1mo agophyloatlasv1.0.6 — data-integrity corrections + TimeTree de-redistribution
- 2mo agophyloatlasv1.0.5 — consistency corrections
- 2mo agophyloatlasv1.0.4 — data corrections + canonical succession (Supplementary Table S7)
- 2mo agophyloatlasv1.0.3 — title alignment, LICENSE, three-category framework, sensitivity bounds ⚡
- 5mo agoraprUnified get_rap_table() replaces the single-endpoint function
- 6mo agoraprrapr 1.1.2
- 9mo agoraprTabular 16-day production API access, plus error handling
- 1y agoraprCRAN release adds 10m Sentinel-2 source and grid templating
- 1y agoraprFinal 0.1.x snapshot before the 1.x rewrite
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between phyloatlas and rapr?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. phyloatlas and rapr are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is phyloatlas better than rapr?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. phyloatlas and rapr are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to phyloatlas?
Top phyloatlas alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "phyloatlas alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/phylo-species-atlas for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to rapr?
Top rapr alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "rapr alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rapr for the full list with editorial commentary on each.