A regionalized dataset of first records of non-indigenous macrophytes and crustaceans in the Mediterranean Sea

The dataset contains information on first records of 125 species of macrophytes and 166 species of crustaceans introduced in the Mediterranean Sea from 1813 to 2019. The Mediterranean Sea was regionalized using the Exclusive Economic Zones (UNCLOS III - Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea) of the countries bordering the basin as a general reference. The original 20 EEZs were reduced to 11 operational geographical units (OGU hereafter; Figure 1) considering current proposals of eco-regionalization of the Mediterranean Sea in relation with trophic regimes, biogeochemistry, and water masses circulation. A list of non-indigenous marine and oligohaline macrophytes (Kingdom Plantae, Phylum Charophyta, Chlorophyta, Rhodophyta, and Tracheophyta; Kingdom Chromista, Phylum Ochrophyta) recorded in the Mediterranean Sea was collated using the catalogue provided by the European Alien Species Information Network (EASIN; http://easin.jrc.ec.europa.eu; database version 8.5 - 14/08/2020 accessed 04/09/2020). The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS; http://www.marinespecies.org) was used to resolve taxonomic uncertainties and synonymies, and for the taxonomic classification of each species. Additionally, a list of non-indigenous crustacean species (Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Arthropoda) was completed adopting identical sources and selection criteria. Both lists were complemented with taxonomic information and additional data regarding the year of first record in each OGU, the primary pathway of introduction identified by the lowest uncertainty (coded according with the Convention on Biological Diversity guidelines or, if not available, a modified Hulme classification criterion), and the native range collated from EASIN, and double-checked and integrated with information from the online databases AquaNIS (www.corpi.ku.lt/aquanis) and AlgaeBase (http://www.algaebase.org/). A number of literature sources, listed in Table 1, were used to complement data on first records in each OGU