Occurrence data mining
After confirming the records in Ecuador as Gonipterus platensis,we generated a database of 347 occurrence records of this species
available in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF.org,
2022; www.gbif.org; https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.8mwpht). The occurrence
dataset included few records from the native range of G.
platensis in Australia (N = 9; GBIF.org, 2022; www.gbif.org;
https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.26tsqw). Therefore, we focused on
characterizing the potential distribution of the species only using
records from the invaded range in South America. Occurrence records were
then verified to ensure georeferencing accuracy, first, by excluding
localities without spatial reference and duplicates, and then, by visual
examination mapping using the packages sp (Pebesma & Bivand,
2005) and maptools (Bivand & Lewin-Koh, 2022) in R v3.6.3 (R
Core Team, 2022). Finally, occurrences were rarefied to an extent of
>5 km spatial distance from each other using the R packageraster (Hijmans, 2023). The 5 km spatial buffer matched the
resolution of the environmental data (see below), and thinning
occurrence datasets helps reduce bias when modeling the distribution of
invasive species (Elith et al., 2010). The final species occurrence
dataset of G. platensis included 52 unique localities that were
used for modeling. Data are available for download in Zenodo
(doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7818068).