Published September 15, 2025 | Version v5
Dataset Open

Global Invasive and Alien Traits and Records (GIATAR) dataset

  • 1. ROR icon North Carolina State University

Description

Monitoring and managing the global spread of invasive and alien species requires accurate spatiotemporal records of species presence and information about the biological characteristics of species of interest including life cycle information, biotic and abiotic constraints and pathways of spread. The Global Invasive and Alien Traits And Records (GIATAR) dataset provides consolidated dated records of invasive and alien presence at the country-scale combined with a suite of biological information about pests of interest in a standardized, machine-readable format. We provide dated presence records for 46,666 alien taxa in 249 countries constituting 827,300 country-taxon pairs, joined with additional biological information for thousands of taxa. GIATAR is designed to be quickly updateable with future data and easy to integrate into ongoing research on global patterns of alien species movement using scripts provided to query and analyze data. 

This publication includes:

  • GIATAR dataset files (dataset)
  • Functions in Python and R to join tables and query data (query_functions)
  • Tutorials and example queries in Python and R (tutorials)

For more information, please refer to the publication:

Saffer, Ariel, Thom Worm, Yu Takeuchi, and Ross Meentemeyer. “GIATAR: A Spatio-Temporal Dataset of Global Invasive and Alien Species and Their Traits.” Scientific Data 11, no. 1 (September 11, 2024): 991. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03824-w.
 
Changes in this version (September 15, 2025):
  • Latest records as of September 8, 2025
For continuous updates to code, please refer to our Github repository: https://github.com/ncsu-landscape-dynamics/GIATAR-dataset

Files

GIATAR.zip

Files (50.5 MB)

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Additional details

Dates

Updated
2024-07-30