Dataset: Inverse responses of species richness and niche specialization to human development

Humans impact biodiversity by altering land use and introducing nonnative species. Yet the extent to which coexistence processes, such as competition and niche shifts, mediate these relationships is not clear. This dataset was used in a study that aims to compare how human development influences wetland plant diversity by examining patterns of species richness, niche specialization, and nonnative species occurrences along a human development gradient.

This dataset can be used to analyzed species richness and niche specialization (a measure of the range of human development extents over which a species occurs) patterns from species occurrence data across 1582 wetlands in Alberta, Canada. Associations between human development extent and species richness, niche specialization, and nonnative species can be tested using linear mixed models. Also, nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination can be applied from raw data (see usage notes) to examine whether community composition differed among wetlands surrounded by different human development extents.

Note that human development data are accessible only through a data sharing agreement with ABMI. See the readme document for more details on how to obtain assess to these data.

Results of these analyses can be found in the corresponding publication: Inverse responses of species richness and niche specialization to human development, Journal of Biogeography. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14240

Methods
Protocols for wetland and terrestrial sites can be found here:

Wetland: https://www.abmi.ca/home/publications/501-550/548 (accessed 07/19/2021)

Terrestrial: https://www.abmi.ca/home/publications/501-550/549 (accessed 07/19/2021)