Introduced and invasive alien species of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean Islands

This dataset provides current and comprehensive information available on the identity, localities, establishment, eradication status, dates of introduction, habitat, and evidence of impact of known introduced and invasive alien species for the terrestrial and freshwater Antarctic and Southern Ocean region. It includes 3066 records for 1204 taxa and 36 localities. This dataset is intended to be an updateable, versioned repository for information on the occurrence and status of alien species in the broader Antarctic region.

The data fields were populated from a systematic search of the scientific and grey literature between March 2021 and January 2023, including peer-reviewed publications, existing species checklists, and government reports and other documents containing species lists, such as management plans. Information sources are included in four fields in the main dataset: occurrenceReference, eradicationReference, firstRecordReference, and invasiveReference. The values in these reference fields correspond to a full list of resources used to compile the dataset, provided in the “AntarcticAliens_references.csv” file (total 384 sources).

A full description of the dataset, data collection and validation methods, and usage notes are provided in the manuscript.