20630581-de64-41d8-ab92-1103f600ae04 1.1 Alien and Invasive Species Virtual Research Environment 2018 2016 2021 The LifeWatch Italy national node has realised the Alien and Invasive Species Virtual Research Environment (Alien Species VRE) for supporting researchers to address basic and applied studies on ecosystem vulnerability to alien species arrival. The Alien Species VRE allows to: - access and download harmonised data on the national distribution of species of fauna and flora belonging to different habitats (marine, fresh and transitional waters, and terrestrial) published through the LifeWatch Italy Data Portal and distributed by the LifeWatch ERIC Metadata Catalogue; - upload their own datasets structured according to the LifeWatch Italy Data Schema in order to execute the service included in the VRE. Giuseppe Corriero University of Bari, Biology Department giuseppe.corriero@uniba.it Cataldo Pierri University of Bari, Biology Department cataldo.pierri@uniba.it Angela Boggero CNR ISE - National Research Council of Italy Institute of Ecosystem Study a.boggero@ise.cnr.it Paolo Tagliolato CNR Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment (IREA), Remote Sensing Departement tagliolato.p@irea.cnr.it Paolo Colangelo CNR ISE - National Research Council of Italy Institute of Ecosystem Study paolo.colangelo@uniroma1.it Ilaria Rosati Institute of Research on Terrestrial Ecosystems (IRET), National Research Council (CNR) ilaria.rosati@cnr.it Lucia Vaira LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre lucia.vaira@lifewatch.eu Alessandro Oggioni CNR Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment (IREA), Remote Sensing Department oggioni.a@irea.cnr.it Alberto Basset University of Salento, LifeWatch Italy alberto.basset@unisalento.it https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu/geonetwork/srv/api/records/20630581-de64-41d8-ab92-1103f600ae04/attachments/Alien_2.png alien species ecosystem vulnerability Virtual Research Environment thesaurus data analysis Metadata records are freely available under a Public Domain (CC0 1.0) License; while the VRE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License. LifeWatch Italy 2021 Ecosystem vulnerability to invasive and alien species This service provides a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) that allow researchers to run a workflow wrapped into R code for: - the reshaping of the input dataset in order to obtain alien species and native specie richness for each family at the habitat and site level; - the selection of the best fitting model; - the plot of the rarefaction curves on the reshaped dataset. https://metadatacatalogue.lifewatch.eu/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/7e81c2d5-8ead-48c1-9e2b-d4306ecb43b9 Alien Species Thesaurus The Alien Species Thesaurus is an initiative to deal with the semantics about alien and invasive species. It has been developed and published by LifeWatch Italy and it is based on already existing glossaries created within the framework of international initiatives aimed at the study of alien and invasive species. The Thesaurus currently consists of about 160 terms. https://ecoportal.lifewatch.eu/ontologies/ALIENSPECIES Boggero, A., Pierri, C., Alber, R. et al. (2016) A geographic distribution data set of biodiversity in Italian freshwaters. Biogeographia – The Journal of Integrative Biogeography 31: 55–72. DOI:10.21426/B631132737. Corriero, G., Pierri, C., Accoroni, S. et al. (2016) Ecosystem vulnerability to alien and invasive species: A case study on marine habitats along the Italian coast. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, 26, 392-409. DOI: 10.1002/aqc.2550. Boggero, A., Basset, A., Austoni, M. et al. (2014) Weak effects of habitat type on susceptibility to invasive freshwater species: an Italian case study. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems, 24, 841-852. DOI: 10.1002/aqc.2450. Colangelo, P., Fontaneto, D., Marchetto, A., Ludovisi, A., Basset, A., Bartolozzi, L., ... & Boggero, A. (2017). Alien species in Italian freshwater ecosystems: a macroecological assessment of invasion drivers. I. Rosati et al. (2017). LifeWatch Italy Thesauri Documentation, Version 1.0. Roma, CNR Pubblicazioni 2017, pp.18, ISBN 978-88-8080-249-5 (online). https://helpdesk.lifewatchitaly.eu