R: summing values of matched names and adding on new names' values - r

Question

I am trying to a simple task, and created a simple example. I would like to add the counts of a taxon recorded in a vector ('introduced',below) to the counts already measured in another vector ('existing'), according to the taxon name. However, when there is a new taxon (present in introduced by not in existing), I would like this taxon and its count to be added as a new entry in the matrix (doesn't matter what order, but name needs to be retained).
For example:
existing<-c(3,4,5,6)
names(existing)<-c("Tax1","Tax2","Tax3","Tax4")
introduced<-c(2,2)
names(introduced)<-c("Tax1","Tax5")
I want new matrix, called "combined" here, to look like this:
#names(combined)= c("Tax1","Tax2","Tax3","Tax4","Tax5")
#combined= c(5,4,5,6,2)
The main thing to see is that "Tax1"'s values are combined (3+2=5), "Tax5" (2) is added on to the end
I have looked around but previous answers similar to this have much more complex data and it is difficult to extract which function I need. I have been trying combinations of match and which, but just cannot get it right.

Answer 1

grp <- c(existing,introduced)
tapply(grp,names(grp),sum)
#Tax1 Tax2 Tax3 Tax4 Tax5
# 5 4 5 6 2

Answer 2

Instead of keeping your data in 'loose' vectors, you may consider collecting them in one data frame. First, put you two sets of vector data in data frames:
existing <- c(3, 4, 5, 6)
taxon <- c("Tax1", "Tax2", "Tax3", "Tax4")
df1 <- data.frame(existing, taxon)
introduced <- c(2, 2)
taxon <- c("Tax1", "Tax5")
df2 <- data.frame(introduced, taxon)
Then merge the two data frames by the common column, 'taxon'. Set all = TRUE to include all rows from both data frames:
df3 <- merge(df1, df2, all = TRUE)
Finally, sum 'existing' and 'introduced' taxon, and add the result to the data frame:
df3$combined <- rowSums(df3[ , c("existing", "introduced")], na.rm = TRUE)
df3
# taxon existing introduced combined
# 1 Tax1 3 2 5
# 2 Tax2 4 NA 4
# 3 Tax3 5 NA 5
# 4 Tax4 6 NA 6
# 5 Tax5 NA 2 2