Contribute unpublished Invasive Alien Species records for GuardIAS

We received a request from Jodey Peyton at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). Her colleague Stelios Katsanevakis is leading a large EU Project GuardIAS on invasive alien species and is collating records of IAS of Union Concern (or species that may be added) from the UK but are unpublished. By unpublished they mean records that:

• Have not been made available in published papers. They may have been used in studies, but the georeferenced data were not included in tables or supplementary material.
• Are not accessible through international databases such as GBIF, EASIN, or iNaturalist. They may exist in national databases or websites or social media but lack visibility to the global community (e.g. in languages other than English or are not easily discoverable via search engines).
• Correspond to specific sites and times different from previously reported records. For instance, the species may be known from a site, but you have more recent observations confirming its continued presence. Such temporal updates are important for understanding the progression of invasions and the (in)effectiveness of management measures.

If you have records of any of the species of interest that you are able and willing to share for this project then please enter them in the  Excel template downloadable from the following link and email them directly to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; also contact her if you have further questions.

Union Concern - Unpublished species Master template.xlsx

Dear all,

We are preparing a collective article, with contributions from hundreds of authors, to compile unpublished records of invasive alien species (IAS) of Union Concern across all environments. I am serving as the national coordinator for UK, responsible for inviting colleagues who may be interested in contributing relevant records.

All contributors will be listed as co-authors of the resulting data paper. Previous efforts of this kind—though limited to marine species and a narrower geographic scope—have proven highly successful, such as:

• Unpublished Mediterranean records of marine alien and cryptogenic species (126 co-authors, >5,300 records, 162 citations)
• Unpublished Mediterranean and Black Sea records of marine alien, cryptogenic, and neonative species (173 authors, >12,600 records, 46 citations)

Geo-referenced records of IAS are critically important for tracking invasion dynamics, identifying ecological requirements, and modelling current and future distributions. After publication, the dataset will be submitted to GBIF and EASIN.

I have attached a DarwinCore-compliant template for data entry, requiring just 8 fields per record (e.g., species name, coordinates, country, year). We kindly ask that all contributions be submitted by the end of June.

Feel free to share this invitation with other colleagues who may have relevant records to submit.

Best regards,

Jodey