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