vfbr provides programmatic access to the virtualflybrain.org website.
Currently there isn't a released version on CRAN, but you can use the devtools [1] package to install the development version:
if (!require("devtools")) install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("jefferis/vfbr")
library(vfbr)
# generic SOLR queries
example(vfb_solr_query)
# queries to find terms matching a synonym
example(vfb_synonym_query)
# package help
?vfbr
[1] Note: Windows users need Rtools and devtools to install via devtools.