This dataset was used to create Figure 1 within the linked On the Nature of Things article. The article describes how botanists have historically contributed to the field of invasion biology and why botanists should be an important contributor in the coming years. To make this point, we compared the relative frequencies of google ngrams containing the words 'invasive species', 'invasive plants', or the sum of frequencies from several different animal taxa including: ‘invasive insects’, ‘invasive animals’, ‘invasive fish’, ‘invasive birds’, ‘invasive amphibians’, and ‘invasive mammals’ from 1958-2019. We also evaluated similar searches that used the words 'exotic', 'foreign' or 'weed' in the place of 'invasive'. This dataset contains the results of these searches with each row representing a separate year and with each column representing a separate search term. Our findings from this dataset support our conclusion that plants have been important model systems in invasion biology as they are the most highly cited the taxonomic group in our search. Results were similar when using 'exotic', 'foreign', but were an order of magnitude higher when using 'weed' as this term is widely used in the public vernacular outside of the research community. This dataset may be of use to anyone interested in the history of invasion biology.

Please see Readme file.