Data from: Temporal invasion regime attributes influence community synchrony and stability in an arid land system

Invasive species have become a major threat to ecosystems across the
globe, causing significant ecological and economic damage. To anticipate
how communities may respond to future invasions, it is crucial to refine
how invader impacts are evaluated, especially in historically uninvaded
and highly variable systems such as arid lands. While invader abundance is
typically used to predict invader impacts, it may not effectively capture
the dynamics that occur over time for established invaders that experience
cyclical dynamics (i.e., boom-bust patterns), making it more challenging
to track invader impacts. To address this issue, we leveraged a long-term
vegetation dataset to develop a novel invasion regime framework for a
dominant annual invader in North American deserts, Brassica tournefortii.
Using abundance data over time, we evaluated how attributes of this
invader’s boom-bust dynamics (i.e., invasion level, boom frequency and
magnitude) influence the long-term synchrony and stability of invaded
Aeolian sand dunes communities. We found that attributes that captured the
temporal effects of the invader were  strong indicators
of the impacts of an invader on long-term attributes of communities.
Specifically, the mean magnitude of invader booms led to a decrease in
species asynchrony and community stability. Increasing boom frequency also
decreased community stability but this was more muted. Mean magnitude of
invader booms also mediated shifts in the relationship between synchrony
and stability, with this relationship becoming more shallow with
increasing boom magnitudes. Our research emphasizes the significance of
using community metrics that capture temporal dynamics to document
invasion impacts within dynamic arid land systems. The invasion regime
framework can additionally offer insights into the mechanisms that may
enable the persistence of the invader over time. Together this knowledge
can be helpful in guiding decision-making and land management strategies
aimed at effectively controlling and mitigating the impact of invasive
species.