The more microplastic types pollute the soil, the stronger the growth suppression of invasive alien and native plants

The ecological consequences of microplastic pollution for plants remain largely unknown, and the few studies that tested the effects usually focused on a single type of microplastic and a single plant species. However, most plants will be exposed to multiple microplastic types simultaneously, and the effects may vary among species.
To test the effects of microplastic diversity on plants, we grew single plants of eight invasive and eight native species in pots with substrate polluted with 0, 1, 3 and 6 types of microplastics.
We found that the growth suppression by microplastic pollution became stronger with the number of microplastic types the plants were exposed to. This tended to be particularly the case for invasive species, as their biomass advantage over natives diminished with the number of microplastic types. The biomass responses coincided with a positive effect of the number of microplastic types on root allocation and thickness, which was also stronger for invasive than for na..., All data were collected from a greenhouse expeirment at the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agricultural Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences., , # The more microplastic types pollute the soil, the stronger the growth suppression of invasive alien and native plants

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp3c](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp3c)

## Description of the data and file structure

| Microplastic diversity | Main experiment |
| :---------------------------------- | :--------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| NrFu | Unique numbers |
| Round 1 | Random numbers |
| Round2 | Random numbers |
| Species | Species name |
| S\_phy ...