Pan Arctic Species List (PASL) matching script

This script matches a provided species list with the Panarctic Species List (PASL) (Raynolds et al, 2013) to obtain the commonly accepted scientific names of the plants, including short names and full names.

Inputs:

Species list: CSV file containing a list of species names, as provided by the geobotanist;
PASL: a text file with the Panarctic Species List names, including the short and full scientific names of the plants (with synonyms).

Outputs:

A new file with the matched species list, including the short and full scientific names of the plants as found in the PASL.

References:

Raynolds, M.K., Breen, A.L., Walker, D.A., Elven, R., Belland, R., Konstantinova, N., Kristinsson, H. & Hennekens, S. (2013). The Pan-Arctic Species List (PASL). Arctic Vegetation Archive (AVA) Workshop.

Methods
The script processes text to translate the names of a target dataset to the PASL format. It does this by removing special characters, replacing "sp" with "species," and adjusting for any 2-symbol differences between matching tables.