Historical and contemporary records of the invasive mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis in southern Africa

This dataset contains data described in the paper entitled "Biogeographic drivers of distribution and abundance in an alien ecosystem engineer: Transboundary range expansion, barriers to spread, and spatial structure". Data include: (1) historical and contemporary records of the invasive mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis to re-construct its invasion history and patterns of spread across biogeographic regions of southern Africa; (2) densities of M. galloprovincialis at different shore heights measured from multiple sites across South Africa; (3) semi-quantitative (ACFOR) abundance values of M. galloprovincialis estimated from multiple sites across South Africa; (4) measurements taken of individual mussels to compare population size structure, characterisation of endolithic infestation, and characterisation of epibionts on shells between range-edge and centre populations of M. galloprovincialis in South Africa; and (5) the GPS co-ordinates determined for every 1-km distance interval of the South African coastline starting from the mouth of the Orange River at the border of South Africa and Namibia.