How to use italics in R graph axis labels

Question

I'm wondering if anyone can help me. I have plotted the following graph:

visreg(MOD.1, xlab="Distance (m)", ylab="Sciurus vulgaris (Presence/Absence)",
       xvar="Distance")

And I would like to make just 'Sciurus vulgaris' in italics. Can anyone help?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Using the example from the documentation of ?visreg I think the functions expression and italic will give you what you need:

fit <- lm(Ozone ~ Solar.R + Wind + Temp,data=airquality)
visreg(fit, xlab="Distance (m)", 
       ylab=expression(italic("Sciurus vulgaris  ") (Presence/Absence)))

Output:

As you can see the y-axis label (only the "sciurus vulgaris") is in italics