Understanding the factors driving ecological and evolutionary interactions of economically important plant species is important for sustainability. Niches of crop wild relatives, including wild potatoes (Solanum section Petota), have received attention, however, such information has not been analyzed in combination with phylogenetic histories, genomic composition, and reproductive systems. The data presented here provide publically available data on the geographic position, climatic niche, life-history (ploidy/mating system) and chloroplast phylogeny. These data were used to understand the interplay of these factors on climate niche in Solanum. 

Data organization and analyses were conducted using the R [ packages “raster” and “tidyverse”. We obtained 49,165 occurrence records of the 72 Solanum species sourced from Castañeda-Álvarez et al. 2015. These occurrences represent the most threatened and useful wild relatives of Solanum tuberosum, the previously cleaned points were further filtered for those lacking latitudinal and/or longitudinal information, resulting in a total of 37,032 total occurrence points. Next, the Köppen-Geiger three-tier climate class system was acquired from Rubel and Kottek 2010. The Köppen-Geiger climate class system divides climates into five main groups that are subdivided based on seasonal precipitation and temperature that result in 30 potential discrete classes globally. The Köppen-Geiger is one of the most widely used systems for analyzing ecological conditions and identifying primary types of plants of a latitudinal and longitudinal intersection. Three-tier climate classes were extracted at each occurrence point. The total number of climate classes per species was counted for each species and climate classes with three or fewer occurrences were removed in order to avoid “by-chance” occurrences. Using discrete climate classes allows for a single measure of both niche diversity and breadth.