Herbivory and elevated levels of CO2 and nutrients separately, rather than synergistically, impacted biomass production and allocation in invasive and native plant species
Data files
Sep 26, 2023 version files 15.30 KB
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README.md
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SLP_Raw_data.rar
Abstract
Large parts of the Earth are experiencing environmental change caused by alien plant invasions, rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), and nutrient enrichments. Elevated CO2 and nutrient concentrations can separately favour growth of invasive plants over that of natives but how herbivory may modulate the magnitude and direction of net responses by the two groups of plants to simultaneous CO2 and nutrient enrichments remains unknown. In line with the enemy release hypothesis, invasive plant species should reallocate metabolites from costly anti-herbivore defences into greater growth following escape from intense herbivory in the native range. Therefore, invasive plants should have greater growth than natives under simultaneous CO2 and nutrient enrichments in the absence of herbivory. To test this prediction, we grew nine congeneric pairs of invasive and native plant species that naturally co-occurred in grasslands in China under two levels each of nutrient enrichment (low-nutrient vs. high-nutrient), herbivory (with herbivory vs. without herbivory) and under ambient (412 ± 0.6 ppm) and elevated (790.1 ± 6.2 ppm) levels of CO2 concentrations in open-top chambers in a common garden. Elevated CO2 and nutrient enrichment separately increased total plant biomass, while herbivory reduced it regardless of the plant invasive status. High-nutrient treatment caused the plants to allocate a significantly lower proportion of total biomass to roots, while herbivory induced an opposite pattern. Herbivory suppressed total biomass production more strongly in native plants than invasive plants. The plants exhibited significant interspecific and intergeneric variation in their responses to the various treatment combinations. Overall, these results suggest that elevated CO2 and nutrients and herbivory may separately, rather than synergistically, impact productivity of the invasive and co-occurring native plant species in our study system. Moreover, interspecific variation in resource-use strategies was more important than invasive status in determining plant responses to the various treatment combinations.
README
This zip directory contains data of plant biomass, CO2 concentrations, air temperature and soil moisture.
- Data of plant biomass under different treatments in our experiment
- NO. random numbers during our experiment;
- OTC: eight open-top chambers (OTCs) in our experiment;
- Treat.R: compartments within the OTCs;
- CO2: treatment include atmospheric CO2 concentration and elevated CO2 concentration;
- Herbivory: treatment of herbivory (with herbivory vs. without herbivory);
- N.add: treatment of nutrient enrichment (low-nutrient vs. high-nutrient);
- Sowing: reproduction modes;
- Species: species identities;
- Genus: genus identities ;
- Family: family identities ;
- Status: plant species invasive status (native vs. invasive);
- Total_biomass: plant total biomass in each pot, measured in grams;
- RMF: root mass fraction in each pot, ratio data with no dimension.
- Data of CO2 concentrations under ambient CO2 and elevated CO2 treatment OTCs
- Min: different minutes in an hour;
- aCO2: average CO2 concentrations in ambient CO2 treatment OTCs, measured in ppm;
- eCO2: average CO2 concentrations in elevated CO2 treatment OTCs, measured in ppm.
- Data of air temperature and soil moisture under ambient CO2 and elevated CO2 treatment OTCs
- treatment: treatment include atmospheric CO2 concentration and elevated CO2 concentration;
- date: different date during our experiment;
- soil_temp/air_temp/air_mois: air temperature (measured in ℃), soil temperature (measured in ℃) and air humidity (ratio data,%) in ambient CO2 and elevated CO2 OTCs.