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Data

Global first records of non-native species

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Biodiversity

What you should know about this indicator

  • For global values a species may be counted multiple times, if the species was found in different regions (one first record per species and region). A region mostly refers to countries and some distinguished islands such as Hawaii, Azores or Sicily.
  • For continental values, only the very first record of a species on a continent is considered. That is, a species has at maximum one first record per continent.
  • Data includes birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, vascular plants, bryophytes, algae, fishes, insects, mollusks, crustaceans, arachnids, arthropods (myriapods, diplopods, etc.), other invertebrates, fungi, bacteria and protozoans.
Global first records of non-native species
The year in which an was first recorded outside of its .
Source
Seebens et al. (2017) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
August 12, 2024
Date range
1503–2014
Unit
species

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The Global Alien Species First Record Database represents a compilation of first records of alien species across taxonomic groups and regions.

A first record denotes the year of first observation of an alien species in a region. Note that this often differs from the date of first introduction. The database covers all regions (mostly countries and some islands) globally with particularly intense sampling in Europe, North America and Australasia. First records were gathered from various data sources including online databases, scientific publications, reports and personal collections by a team of >45 researchers. The data were gathered from 102 sources consisting of online databases, scientific publications, reports and personal collections, resulting in 45,813 first records of 16,926 established alien species in 282 non-overlapping regions. A full list of data sources, an analysis of global and continental trends and more details about the data can be found in our open access publication: Seebens et al. (2017) No saturation in the accumulation of alien species worldwide. Nature Communications 8, 14435.

Retrieved on
August 12, 2024
Retrieved from
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14435
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Seebens, H., Blackburn, T., Dyer, E. et al. No saturation in the accumulation of alien species worldwide. Nat Commun 8, 14435 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14435

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

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  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Global first records of non-native species”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Fiona Spooner and Max Roser (2022) - “Biodiversity”. Data adapted from Seebens et al.. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-first-records-of-established-alien-species [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Seebens et al. (2017) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Seebens et al. (2017) – processed by Our World in Data. “Global first records of non-native species” [dataset]. Seebens et al., “Global Alien Species First Record Database” [original data]. Retrieved December 15, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-first-records-of-established-alien-species