Abstract Summary: Biodiversity studies are relying increasingly on primary biodiversity records (PBRs) for modelling and analysis. Because biodiversity data are frequently ‘harvested’—i.e. not collected by the researcher for that particular study, but obtained from data aggregators such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility—researchers need to be aware of strengths and weaknesses of their data before they venture into further analysis. R is becoming a lingua franca of data exploration and analysis. Here, we describe an R package, bdvis, which facilitates efforts to understand the gaps and strengths of PBR data with quick and useful visualization functions. Availability and Implementation: The full code of the R package bdvis, along with instructions on how to install and use it, is available via CRAN – The Comprehensive R Archive Network (http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/bdvis/index.html) and in the corresponding author’s main GitHub repository: http://www.github.com/vijaybarve/bdvis. The source code is licensed under CC0 Contact: vijay.barve@gmail.com