Data from: Suppression of a plant hormone gibberellin reduces growth of invasive plants more than native plants

Subsequent to escape from intense herbivory in the native range, invasive
plants are expected to reduce allocation to costly anti-herbivory defences
and have greater competitive ability than co-occurring native species.
Given that invasive alien plants often occur in open habitats where light
is less limited, it is reasonable to hypothesize that invasive plants
should express high concentrations of gibberellins that enable them to
allocate more biomass to roots, and thus have higher competitive ability
than native plants. To test this prediction, we grew five congeneric pairs
of invasive alien plants and native plants under two levels of nutrient
availability (low versus high) and treated a half of the plants with a
gibberellin biosynthesis inhibitor, paclobutrazol. Paclobutrazol
significantly decreased aboveground, belowground, and total biomass of the
test plants. Interestingly, the effects on belowground biomass were
significantly stronger for invasive plants than for native plants. A
similar pattern was found for total biomass (marginally significant effect
p = 0.0592). Additionally, paclobutrazol decreased root mass fraction for
invasive plants, but tended to increase it for native plants. Our findings
suggest that plant hormones can differently regulate biomass allocation of
invasive and native plants, and thus contribute to greater growth of
invasive plants compared to native plants.