Data set belonging to the study 'Plant population and soil origin effects on nematode community composition in the rhizosphere of a range-expanding plant species and a native congener'. In this study, we experimentally compared the development of nematode communities originating from northern and southern European soils in the rhizospheres of different populations of the range-expanding plant species Centaurea stoebe and the native plant species Centaurea jacea. The experiment was carried out in a greenhouse of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW; Wageningen, The Netherlands). 

The presented nematode community data was collected from micro-cosms containing sterilized background soil inoculated with 10% live soil from either Slovenian or Dutch grassland systems. These microcosms were grown for 11 weeks with a single individual of Centaurea stoebe, a range-expanding plant species that recently has established in north-western Europe, or the native plant species Centaurea jacea. These plants originated from three different populations from both northern Europe (Netherlands) and southern Europe (Slovenia). After 11 weeks, aboveground and belowground plant parts were harvested, dried and weighed. Nematode communities were collected using Oostenbrink elutriators. Nematodes were identified up to trophic groups (bacterivores, fungivores, predators + omnivores) or, in the case of root-feeding nematodes, up to the level of family or genus. 

No missing values; a couple of samples (N = 4) were lost during the nematode analyses. ReadMe-file is included in the document.