The occurrence data of Ageratina adenophora in China and Mexico

Aim: Niche dynamics of invasive alien plants (IAPs) play pivotal roles in biological invasion. Ageratina adenophora—one of the most aggressive IAPs in China and some parts of the world—poses severe ecological and socioeconomic threats. However, the spatiotemporal niche dynamics of A. adenophora in China remain unknown, which we aimed to elucidate in the present study. Location: China, Mexico Methods: Using a unifying framework, we reconstructed the climate niche dynamics of. adenophora and applied the optimal MaxEnt model to predict its potential geographical distribution in China. Furthermore, we compared the heterogeneity of A. adenophora niche between Mexico (native) and China (invasive). Results: We observed a low niche overlap between Mexico (native) and China (invasive). Specifically, the niche of A. adenophora in China has distinctly expanded compared with that in Mexico, enhancing the invasion risk of this IAP in the former country. In fact, the climatic niche of A. adenophora i...