Data from: The Matthew effect: common species become more common and rare ones become more rare in response to artificial light at night

Artificial light at night (ALAN) has been and still is rapidly spreading,
and has become an important component of global change. Although numerous
studies have tested its potential biological and ecological impacts on
animals, very few studies have tested whether it affects alien and native
plants differently. Furthermore, common plant species, and particularly
common alien species, are often found to benefit more from additional
resources than rare native and rare alien species. Whether this is also
the case with regard to increasing light due to ALAN is still unknown.
Here, we tested how ALAN affected the performance of common and rare alien
and native plant species in Germany directly, and indirectly via flying
insects. We grew five common alien, six rare alien, five common native and
four rare native plant species under four combinations of two ALAN (no
ALAN vs ALAN) and two insect-exclusion (no exclusion vs exclusion)
treatments, and compared their biomass production. We found that common
plant species, irrespective of their origin, produced significantly more
biomass than rare species, and that this was particularly true under ALAN.
Furthermore, alien species tended to show a slightly stronger positive
response to ALAN than native species did (p = 0.079). Our study shows that
common plant species benefited more from ALAN than rare ones. This might
lead to competitive exclusion of rare species, which could have cascading
impacts on other trophic levels and thus have important community-wide
consequences, when ALAN becomes more widespread. In addition, the slightly
more positive response of alien species indicates that ALAN might increase
the risk of alien plant invasions.