Complete Data and Analysis for: Niche models differentiate potential impacts of two aquatic invasive plant species on native macrophytes

Abstract

The goal of our study was to elucidate the mechanisms by which two invasive aquatic plant species (Myriophyllum spicatum and Potamogeton crispus) interact with native plant communities in lakes in Minnesota, USA. We used an observational dataset of aquatic plant occurrences—and associated light availability, depth, and temperature—to construct probabilistic models of the ecological niches of 34 aquatic plant species. We then compared shared-ness of these niches between the two invasive aquatic plants and 32 native species to infer the degree of direct competitive interaction. This repository contains the complete dataset as a comma-separated-value file and Program R code necessary to replicate the data prep, exploration, analysis, and visualizations presented in the manuscript.