Data from: Habitat explains patterns of population decline for an invasive crayfish

Invasive non-indigenous species are defined by their impacts: they
substantially change native communities or ecosystems. Accordingly,
invasive species might transform their habitats in ways that eventually
become unfavorable to them, causing population declines or even
extirpations. Here we use over 40 years of systematically collected data
on the abundance of the invasive rusty crayfish Faxonius rusticus from 17
lakes in northern Wisconsin, USA to explore if population declines of this
invader are related to the prevalence of rocky habitat, which shelters
crayfish from predators and is unchanged by crayfish. We predicted that
lakes with rock-dominated substrates would be resistant to F. rusticus
population declines, whereas lakes lacking rock-dominated substrates would
experience F. rusticus declines due to crayfish destruction of
shelter-providing macrophytes. We found that in nearly half (47%) of the
study lakes, F. rusticus experienced population declines over the study
time period, and these lakes had significantly lower proportions of rock
substrate than lakes that did not experience population declines. We
recommend that more studies should investigate the potential for invasive
species-mediated community or ecosystem feedbacks to eventually contribute
to their own population declines.