10.5061/DRYAD.4P3S0
Wang, Yong-Jian
Huazhong Agricultural University
Müller-Schärer, Heinz
University of Fribourg
van Kleunen, Mark
Taizhou University
University of Konstanz
Cai, Ai-Ming
Huazhong Agricultural University
Zhang, Ping
Huazhong Agricultural University
Yan, Rong
Huazhong Agricultural University
Dong, Bi-Cheng
Beijing Forestry University
Yu, Fei-Hai
Taizhou University
Data from: Invasive alien plants benefit more from clonal integration in
heterogeneous environments than natives
Dryad
dataset
2017
National Science Foundation
https://ror.org/021nxhr62
NSFC (31770449, 31570413, 31270465)
2017-09-26T20:40:27Z
2017-09-26T20:40:27Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.14820
42744 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
What confers invasive alien plants a competitive advantage over native
plants remains open to debate. Many of the world's worst invasive
alien plants are clonal and able to share resources within clones (clonal
integration), particularly in heterogeneous environments. Here, we tested
the hypothesis that clonal integration benefits invasive clonal plants
more than natives and thus confers invasives a competitive advantage. We
selected five congeneric and naturally co-occurring pairs of invasive
alien and native clonal plants in China, and grew pairs of connected and
disconnected ramets under heterogeneous light, soil nutrient and water
conditions that are commonly encountered by alien plants during their
invasion into new areas. Clonal integration increased biomass of all
plants in all three heterogeneous resource environments. However, invasive
plants benefited more from clonal integration than natives. Consequently,
invasive plants produced more biomass than natives. Our results indicate
that clonal integration may confer invasive alien clonal plants a
competitive advantage over natives. Therefore, differences in the ability
of clonal integration could potentially explain, at least partly, the
invasion success of alien clonal plants in areas where resources are
heterogeneously distributed.
data-biomassdata of table 1 and Fig.1, biomass of clone, recipient and
donor in three heterogeneous environments. data format is for R
analysis.R-codeR code for Table 1 and Table S2data-root leaf and clonal
organ massdata for Fig.S1 and Table S2