Data from: Different mechanisms explain decoupled co-occurrence patterns of native and non-native macroinvertebrates

Biological invasion is a key driver of biodiversity loss, leading to
significant changes in community composition and structure. Hence,
understanding how biological invasions influence community assembly
processes is crucial for identifying invasion mechanisms and developing
management strategies aimed at minimizing their impacts on natural
ecosystems. Beyond environmental filtering or niche-based exclusion,
biotic interactions (e.g., interspecific competition) between invasive and
their native counterparts can also affect species distributions and local
invasion dynamics. This study combined joint Species Distribution Models
(jSDMs) with a long-term European-level dataset to uncover co-occurrence
patterns and community organization of freshwater macroinvertebrates in
the context of biological invasion. To do this, we considered functional
traits, phylogenetic relationships, environmental niches, and residual
variance potentially mirroring species-to-species interactions between
non-native and native species. Environmental covariates exhibited
significant differences in explaining variation of occurrences between
native and non-native species, although environmental filtering had a more
pronounced effect on native species. This finding supported the hypothesis
that non-native species generally exhibit broader environmental niches.
Indeed, our findings emphasized the importance of biotic filtering (in the
form of interspecific competition and invasion meltdown among non-native
species) acting beyond the abiotic environment in shaping the distribution
of non-native and native species, providing a more nuanced view of the key
drivers underlying invasion risk and success.