Dataset DOI: 10.5061/dryad.wm37pvn2q

Description of data and file structure

This dataset contains derived PCA scores from occurrence records of 15 native US and southern Canada Polistes species and the invasive P. dominula. Original occurrence data were downloaded separately from GBIF and iNaturalist (8 April 2025), cleaned using CoordinateCleaner, filtered for coordinate uncertainty, and spatially thinned to 1 km using spThin, producing 82,058 records. Environmental data include 19 bioclimatic variables and elevation from WorldClim v2.1 (30 arc-second resolution) and urbanization data from the Global Impervious Surface Area dataset (1 km resolution). Raw occurrence records are not included due to mixed licensing across GBIF and iNaturalist sources; original records can be retrieved via the GBIF download DOI listed below and iNaturalist. R scripts for all analyses are included to ensure full reproducibility from raw data to final results.

Note on geographic coordinates: Latitude and longitude coordinates are included in the PCA score files to help spatial reproducibility. All Polistes species in this dataset are common, non-threatened species with no IUCN conservation concern status.

Data files:

• "pca_scores_occurrence_16species.csv": PCA-projected occurrence scores for all 16 Polistes species against a USA/southern Canada background, derived from 19 bioclimatic variables (WorldClim v2.1). 

  "pca_scores_background_16species.csv": PCA-projected background (available environment) scores for the 16-species analysis.

  "pca_scores_occurrence_dominula_native_invasive.csv": PCA-projected occurrence scores for P. dominula native vs. invasive range comparison.

  "pca_scores_background_dominula_native_invasive.csv": PCA-projected background scores for the P. dominula native vs. invasive range comparison.

Descriptions of the variables on the file provided:

Column definitions that applies to  pca_scores_occurrence_16species.csv and pca_scores_occurrence_dominula_native_invasive.csv:

• longitude: Decimal degrees (WGS84)
• latitude: Decimal degrees (WGS84)
• uncertainty: Coordinate uncertainty in meters as reported by the original data source
• Range: Geographic range designation (Native or Invasive)
• species: Species name
• Source: Original data provider ("GBIF" or "iNaturalist")
• PC1–PC20: PCA scores on each of the 20 principal component axes, derived from 19 bioclimatic variables (WorldClim v2.1) and elevation
• Range.1: Duplicate of Range column retained from data processing pipeline

Column definitions apply to pca_scores_background_16species.csv and pca_scores_background_dominula_native_invasive.csv:

• longitude: Decimal degrees (WGS84)
• latitude: Decimal degrees (WGS84)
• PC1–PC20: PCA scores on each of the 20 principal component axes, derived from 19 bioclimatic variables (WorldClim v2.1) and elevation

Scripts (run in this order): Since this deposit includes derived PCA scores, users can run analyses directly starting from script 03. If reproducing the full pipeline from raw occurrence data (retrievable via the GBIF download DOI listed in the Access information section), begin with script 01.

• 00_clean_occurrences.R: cleans the downloaded CSV file and makes one combined CSV file with all occurrence records, which can be used for downstream analysis.
• 01_data_cleaning_spatial_thinning.R: spatially thins occurrence records from GBIF and iNaturalist to 1 km minimum distance and produces polistes_thinned_1km.csv
• 02_PCA_niche_breadth.R: PCA on all 16 species against a USA/southern Canada background; projects occurrences into PCA space, producing pca_scores_background_16species.csv and pca_scores_background_dominula_native_invasive.csv
• 03_niche_overlap_and_breadth.R: Pairwise niche overlap, equivalency/similarity tests, and bootstrap confidence intervals for niche breadth across all species. #### Start here if using deposited PCA scores
• 04_dominula_nativeVSinvasive_PCA.R: Separate PCA for P. dominula native vs. invasive ranges.
• 05_COUE_niche_dynamics.R: COUE niche dynamics, statistical tests, and bootstrap confidence intervals.
• 06_MESS_analysis.R: MESS analysis to identify novel climates in the invasive range relative to the native range.
• 07_climate_urban_comparison.R: Full comparison of climate and urbanization variables between native and invasive ranges.
• 08_expansion_drivers.R: Assigns invasive occurrences to COUE zones and tests environmental drivers of expansion using Wilcoxon and Kruskal-Wallis tests with BH correction.

Required directory structure:

Users must manually create the following directory structure before running the scripts. The folders are not included in the deposit but are required for the scripts to execute correctly:

project/
├── data/
│   ├── pca_scores/
│   │   ├── pca_scores_occurrence_16species.csv
│   │   ├── pca_scores_background_16species.csv
│   │   ├── pca_scores_occurrence_dominula_native_invasive.csv
│   │   └── pca_scores_background_dominula_native_invasive.csv
│   └── environment/
│       ├── worldclim_30s/       ← WorldClim v2.1 rasters (download separately)
│       └── GISA_pct_2020_1km.tif  ← GISA urbanization raster (download separately)
├── results/                     ← created automatically by scripts
└── scripts/
    ├── 01_data_cleaning_spatial_thinning.R
    ├── 02_PCA_niche_breadth.R
    ├── 03_niche_overlap_and_breadth.R
    ├── 04_dominula_nativeVSinvasive_PCA.R
    ├── 05_COUE_niche_dynamics.R
    ├── 06_MESS_analysis.R
    ├── 07_climate_urban_comparison.R
    └── 08_expansion_drivers.R

External data files required (not included in deposit):

The following files must be downloaded manually and placed in the directories shown above.

• WorldClim v2.1 bioclimatic rasters (30 arc-second resolution): Download from https://www.worldclim.org and place all raster files in data/environment/worldclim_30s/.
• GISA urbanization raster (GISA_pct_2020_1km.tif): Download from sources described in Huang et al. (2021) and Ren et al. (2025) and place in data/environment/. 

Code/software

All analyses were done in R (v4.3.1; R Core Team, 2024). Key packages include: ecospat (v3.1), spThin, CoordinateCleaner, dismo, RANN, geometry, terra, raster, sf, rnaturalearth, dplyr, tidyverse, and ggplot2. All individual package names with versions are provided in each R script.

WorldClim v2.1 rasters (30 arc-second resolution) must be downloaded separately from https://www.worldclim.org and placed in data/environment/worldclim_30s/. The GISA urbanization raster must be downloaded separately from the sources described in Huang et al. (2021) and Ren et al. (2025) and placed in data/environment/ as GISA_pct_2020_1km.tif.

Access information

Data was derived from the following sources:

• Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF): GBIF.org (2025). GBIF Occurrence Download. https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.rgpy8z
• iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org
• WorldClim v2.1: https://www.worldclim.org
• Global Impervious Surface Area (GISA) dataset: Huang et al. (2021) and Ren et al. (2025)