Habitat niche breadth expands over centuries in Europe's alien flora — analysis code and inputs

Analysis code and hurdle-model input CSVs for the manuscript Habitat niche breadth expands over centuries in Europe's alien flora. Abstract. Across Europe, alien plants predominantly occur in disturbed, human-modified vegetation. Whether these gateway habitats confine the alien flora, or serve as a springboard from which alien species' habitat niche broadens with residence time into wider, more natural vegetation, remains unknown. We analysed 1,023,883 plots from the European Vegetation Archive (1930–2023) containing 1,357 post-1492 alien plant species, grouped species into residence-time cohorts, and identified the habitats in which each was overrepresented relative to local habitat availability. Among species overrepresented in at least one habitat, the estimated probability of overrepresentation in more than one rose from 33% among recently introduced species to 74% among species present for over 200 years. Ruderal habitats were the most invaded throughout (23% to 36%), overrepresentation increased most steeply in arable land (from 9% to 24%), and alpine and nutrient-poor habitats remained rarely overrepresented. Among the habitats in which a species was overrepresented, the earliest vegetation records were most often in ruderal habitats, followed by dry grasslands and deciduous forests. Habitat breadth therefore broadens across centuries of residence, and aliens already present could still reach natural habitats that remain largely free of them today. Licence. The code is released under the MIT licence (LICENSE-CODE.txt). The data tables are released under CC BY 4.0 (LICENSE-DATA.txt), which is the licence recorded for this record.