The Alien Species First Records data set contains years (first records) when an established alien species was first recorded in a region (mostly countries, but also sub-national units). The first records were gathered in a collaborative effort involving >50 researchers worldwide from various sources consisting of online databases, scientific publications, reports and personal collections. A full list of data sources is provided in the data set and the data are described in more detail in the (compilation of data, list of data sources, delineation of continents, analyses etc.) in the following publication, which can be downloaded with free access: Seebens, H., Blackburn, T. M., Dyer, E. E., Genovesi, P., Hulme, P. E., Jeschke, J. M., … Essl, F. (2017). No saturation in the accumulation of alien species worldwide. Nature Communications, 8(1), 14435. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14435 The data set was revised and further extended in version 1.2, which was introduced by: Seebens, H., Blackburn, T. M., Dyer, E. E., Genovesi, P., Hulme, P. E., Jeschke, J. M., … Essl, F. (2018). Global rise in emerging alien species results from increased accessibility of new source pools. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(10), E2264–E2273. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1719429115 One of the above references needs to be cited in case of using the data set.

Version 2 represents a revised and extended version of 1.2. This database version contains >14,000 additional first records of alien species compared to the former version. Several parts of the database have been revised and adjusted to meet biodiversity standards. The spatial resolution, regions names, column names and the structure of the final database have been revised and slightly modified.